Hampton Court Half 2020

Happy chappy. Mad hair.

I’ve continued with my vegan eating and my weight has stabilised at 70kg, which is perfect. As I’ve stated last post, I’m lighter and leaner and feeling better for it, so I’m happy to continue with this eating regime. I think I’ve got over not being able to eat a bar of fruit and nut and continue to explore new foods and recipes.

So I went into the 2020 HCH feeling much fitter than I had in a while; well, run fit anyway. I was hoping for something between 1:28 to 1:30hrs and bearing in mind the fact I wasn’t focussing solely on running, this would be a good result for me and let me continue training the following week.

I can’t remember now which storm it was, that was blowing through that weekend, but while most of the rain had finished, it was still very blustery and therefore pacing would be hard. As usual, I put myself in what I thought was the race pen only to find myself swamped by other, slower runners as the countdown began. But after the Royal Parks Half late last year where I went out too hard in the first 5 miles, I was determined to pace this one better. The first little loop around Thames Dutton had that familiar feel of the Charge of the Light Brigade with everyone hitting the first 800 meters quite hard, but I let everyone go and started to find my own space, which was quite hard on some of the narrow, single lane paths early on.

As we turned onto the Portsmouth Road which was the long leg to the top of the course, the wind was now gently pushing us along and I made sure I was holding back, not getting carried away. Gradually the field thinned out and I found myself in a little group, exchanging the odd word here and there, before we got to the turn loop up by Ham. Although we were now into wind, this bit was quite sheltered until we got to Kingston Bridge and it now felt we were running into a wind tunnel.  Although feeling strong, it was like a hand on my chest, physically holding me back. I thought my luck was in as I was running with a chap who was well over 6 feet tall, so I snuck in behind him, only to find he was running just a bit too slowly for me, so I reluctantly pulled aside and started to motor ahead.

The drag back along the Thames footpath seemed to take much longer and I started to wonder if I’d blown it. I hadn’t been doing too many checks on my Garmin, preferring to run to rpe, but the headwind was now really starting to bite, despite my conservative start. In the last couple of miles I started to be overtaken by a few other runners so it was about the mental battle of trying to keep my pace up, without dying too much.  As luck would have it, I got into a bit of a battle with another chap (we both looked in the same age group so I think we were quite aware of trying to get in front of each other; as it turned out we were battling for a lowly 42nd place in AG!). With 800 meters to go I managed to get my nose in front and cross the line in 1:27:58, so bang on target. I think had the wind been lower, there may have been another 45 to 60 seconds to come off that, so, yes, I was pretty chuffed.