The Royal Parks Half Marathon was my first full-blown race, officially-timed, and my first attempt at the 21.1K distance. Never did that distance before, even during my practise runs, and my body is screaming at me not to do it again. But we’ll see.
The race was pretty comfortable for the first 10K, but when I hit 13K, my hip started to hurt and I had to drop down to a walk to recover.
The remaining race was much slower than the first half with my hip and my hamstring (both of them) hurting like hell. Even when I got to towards the finish line, people were walking. One of them had pulled muscle, so I stopped to help him out for a bit. He was concerned about my time, but as long as I finish, I’m happy.
I got over the finish line in 2:03:35 according to Endomondo, and my official time was 2:07:33. Considering this was my first half marathon, and I managed to average 6:00 min/km (I hit 20K at 2:00:00).
It was a painful journey home too. My legs hurt like hell, climbing up or down stairs made the pain spike, but it’s getting easier now.
I don’t think I’ll be running a full marathon any time soon, until I can get the Half Marathon distance down comfortably. It was really hard going at the end:
And plenty of new achievements and awards from Nike+
Just got an email from the RPHM organisers. There’s an app in the Google Play store that allows you to track the runners (including me) during the race, and also provides split times as they run over the timing mats. For runners, it also shows you where you are on the course at that time. Although I wouldn’t recommend it — you need to make sure you’re not running into the barriers :D
Eliud Kipchoge won the Berlin Marathon on Saturday. You probably didn’t know this if you’re American. That’s fine; marathons don’t make for great spectating, and the Boston Marathon is the only race that really becomes part of the national conversation stateside.
But you’re going to want to hear just how Kipchoge won the Berlin Marathon. That’s the real story here, one both inspiring and maddening at the same time.
Eventually both insoles would become so dislodged that Kipchoge was forced to run most of the race with an insole hanging out of each shoe.
Kipchoge’s shoes. Imagine running like this.
IMAGE: MICHAEL SOHN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
But there was no way to stop. Fixing the problem would waste precious time, and the irritation had grown so great there was no guarantee he’d be able to commence running again once he’d stopped.
And the most important line of the article:
“I had pain in my foot, but what could I do?” he told Runner’s World. “I had to finish the race.”
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