My poor legs! Race preview "The Kenilworth Half Marathon"

Well it`s been a pretty busy week since my physio visit, work has been very busy having to work 12 hour shifts all last week, and my heel continues to be a little sore , although it has improved a bit I think despite my irresponsible behaviour at the weekend!! Yes despite the promises I`ve been making to myself not to run the half marathon in Kenilworth on Sunday, I just couldn`t help myself the promise of yet another t shirt and medal was just to much to resist!

Went along with a m8 from work (John) and apart from a few Garmin issues (not mine) we lined up on the start line at 10am on a glorious sunny early October morning. I think there were about 500 runners all in all so there was a nice race atmosphere. Just before the start I bumped into my running coach of my local running club, so that fired up my competitive nature a bit we run at similar speeds so beating Tim was going to be a challenge! Despite the fact I`d hardly run since the Nottingham half marathon i was hoping that I had maintained much of my fitness I`d taken into that race.

So the race started and it started at quite a pace the first 2 or 3 miles were either down hill or flat so had a really nice start averaging about 6.15 pace, after about 5 or 6 miles the course got pretty hilly and the three weeks off from running started to show, my legs didn`t feel great but on a positive side my heel injury was absolutely fine so ran on as hard as I could. 3/4 of an hour in I took my one and only gel I`d brought, at this point I started to feel like I was a bit carb depleted and and wished Id brought a second one, still on the whole still felt fairly strong and by mile 10 knew I could hang on, my final time another PB of 1.24.3 seconds!
My legs after though felt totally done in though and took till weds to feel anything like normal again. Still a fab race well organised, nice weather and good atmosphere with some nice support on the way round...what better way to spend a Sunday morning.
So needless to say the training has been almost non existent this week a very short run in the middle of the week and 3 day commuting to work on my bike has been about it. Need to replenish the batteries though next week going to start training for a spring marathon, but that`s a story for the next post.