Sunday 22nd October 2017 @9am
Both John and I love the Stroud Half Marathon. It is a very well organised event on the flattest course in all the half marathon races I have ever entered.
Being 123 miles away from home, we always arrive the day before and stay at the hotel. This year they move the start time forward by one hour to 9am. We didn’t mind at all as our hotel is only a short walk to the start. In the past years, we used to have our breakfast at 7. Then we went back to our room and would leave about 9. This year, the hotel already knew the start time would be at 9 and they even accommodated us by getting the restaurant ready for breakfast at 6:30.
The weather was not too bad. It was drizzling a bit and the temperature remained at mid-teens. It was dry throughout the race and sun even made a cameo on a couple of occasions. The was a road closure for the first couple of miles to allow sufficient space for nearly 1,800 runners to pass through. The route is mostly flat and wide with no tight turns at all. There is a slight incline (I would never call it a hill!) between mile 6 and 7. During this stretch, the local people cheered us on and handed us jelly babies. Children were reaching out their little hands to have high fives with the runners. The atmosphere was fantastic. You then reached to the top of the incline before you even noticed it.
Between mile 8 and 9, we were running on a quite busy road with cars zooming up and down next to us. Although the organiser had put traffic cones to separate the runners and the motorists, some runners overtook by running on the other side of the cones. When I saw some runners getting so close to the moving cars on the road, for a moment, I felt my heart stopped beating. It was just too scary to watch !!. I’m not sure whether the marshals were aware of such closeness between the runners and the vehicles could become quite hazardous especially some impatient drivers wouldn’t want to give way to the runners.
By mile 10, we entered to a very quiet road inside an industrial estate. It was totally traffic free as it was Sunday. John said he doesn’t like this part of the race as it is not scenic and it is boring. And that’s why they always put a steel band blasting out encouraging music at the entrance / exit of the industrial estate to motivate the runners. This year I heard the Queen’s number: “Don’t stop me now” – how appropriate!. By the time when we came out of the industrial estate, we nearly reached 11 miles.
During the large part of October, I was nursing my chest infection plus my posterior cruciate ligament was flaring up. I didn’t train enough mileage I needed to in order to prepare for the half marathon distance. It goes without saying that I was unable to do sub 9-minute-a-mile pace to finish in sub 2 hours. My average pace was 9’42” which was a l
ong way from 9-minute-a-mile pace. I only managed to finish in 2:07’39” which was 7 minutes slower than last year and 13 minutes slower than my PB (also in Stroud) of 1:54’51”. John finished in 2:22’46” which was 13 minutes faster than last year as last year he had a very bad hangover from the Trafalgar Day celebration on Friday night. For full results, please visit:
https://www.fullonsport.com/event/stroud-half-marathon-2017/results
Our next half marathon event is the Grand Union Canal Half Marathon on 12th November. The course is a lot more difficult than Stroud though as the canal towpath is very stony and narrow. We also need to climb up and down of several footbridges. I still remember the last mile is the hardest when we enter a park from the canal. The whole final mile is uphill!!!