Watford Half Marathon

I arrived at the course directed by some terrible signs to the race and ended up in a car park about 10 minutes walk away. It was a freezing cold morning and as I got towards the start I asked a steward where I could pick up my number for the race, he took me to a little tent close to the line but then it seemed to have every age group number apart from the senior men's so he told me to walk another 10 minutes to a different building. Now why would you keep the numbers so far from the race is beyond me, but I got there and then I wasn't even on the 'list' (having been told I would 3 days prior i thought this was strange), 3 lady's had no clue who I was and that I couldn't get a number! After trying to explain who I was one of them said "that sounds familiar", I was passed an entry form and had to fill it out before they would give me the number.

So then I was putting the number on as I went back towards the start and in full gear and a packed start line the gun went off!! I was standing there with tracksuit, back pack on thinking "I'm stuffed!" I tried to get my bottoms and top off and passed to Lee but had no time to change trainers into my racing flats or even change my terrible big socks which I had on to keep warm.

I chased the field down in bobble hat, gloves, t-shirt, vest, cycling shorts, casual shorts and trainers that weren't even laced up tight enough. I was now trying to get through the field and running on grass to get around all the runners, I passed 2 miles on my watch in 10 minutes 6 seconds!! This was a little worrying for a few reasons:-

1. I'm not in 65/66minute shape so I know I am going to blow up
2. I still can't see the leaders.
3. My trainers are slipping and already irritating me.

At this point I had enough I slowed up, I fell back into a little group of 3 and thought I'll just pull out when I get near the start/finish area. As we got to about 6miles I turned to a guy next to me and said "is this a one lap course or two?" he replied "one mate". That was it..... I was going to have to run the whole thing. It was a tough little course though and a bit windy and I was now starting to drift mentally thinking about things like football dream teams, plans for tomorrow, even that the photos are going to look terrible with these big socks!

I got to the finish and was a bit surprised as I ran 73 minutes (72 mins on my watch as I started late) but not a happy bunny to miss out on cash because they didn't put me on the entry list (obviously this meant i missed the start and had to run through hundreds of people which sort of makes things difficult). The organiser was a worrying me a bit when I didn't get an email response confirming my entry but you live and learn I suppose, and still a good training run.

Simx