Hanner Marathon Caerdydd

I ran the Cardiff Half Marathon ten days ago.  It's huge, 19,000 in it, and I'd go back - very well organised, nice course, happy atmosphere, snazzy t-shirt.  I've had calf niggles on and off most of the year, so was a bit short of mileage going in, but felt I was slowly rounding into some form in the couple of weeks before - maybe under 1.35 with a bit of luck, but mainly wanted to come out unscathed calf-wise. 

I was in the orange zone - it went white, orange, green, yellow on predicted time, so I had a butcher's at the runners around me as we milled about and then inched my way towards the front of the zone.  A few other grizzled veterans had evidently had the same idea and so we stood behind the tape at the head of the zone and surveyed the white 'elite' competitors 20 yards or so ahead of us, maybe a thousand of them at a guess.  Some way into this group I could see the sub 1.30 pacer and me and my fellow grizzlers' eyes were drawn to those close to him.  We exchanged 'no way, just no way' glances at the sight of a few of this number, who had clearly never run a half before and had been wildly ambitious in their predictions. 

But no time for negativity, let's be positive and calm, and look, here's Colin Jackson on an open top bus, there's a helicopter circling a clock tower, I hear the Welsh National Anthem blaring out, this is all pretty good, in fact it's lovely, a la la la la la. . . . .and we're off!  

Ok, 15 seconds or so to cross the line, I'm an old-school gun time bandido so that counts, and this feels fast, it's rammed but we're tanking along with no bottlenecks, maybe a tad too fast.  Here's the mile marker, nice and big and red, can't miss that - I likee very much, 7.07 including the 15 seconds, hmmm, maybe I don't likee quite so much, a bit speedy, but whoa, I spy the pacer up the road, rounding a corner about 150 yards ahead.  I'm not the only one to spy him either.  No, don't be silly, no, don't be silly, no don't be. . . . .ok then, be silly - me and the 40 or 50 around me have the same idea and we speed up, oh yes indeedy, very silly, and I pass the big red 2 mile marker in 13.44, and shortly after me and my intrepid, possibly foolish comrads latch on to the back of a massive group, all eyes locked on to a stick poking out of a lightweight rucksack.  At the top of the stick is a piece of cardboard.  The cardboard sayeth 'Sub 1.30'.  This is madness.  I'm sweating freely, I'm under pressure, I'm breathing like Darth Vader, I've just run a 6.37 mile, I know I can't keep this up, but this is why I love Half Marathons - be brave and commit, oh yes!

 

I can feel the exhilaration and anxiety all around me as we try to hang on at the rear of the pack, it almost makes me want to laugh out loud, but I don't have the breath to do so.  We've thrown the Even Pace Handbook out the window and we're flying. . . . . for now.  We last until the hill at 4 and a half miles, it's fairly sharp and only about 100 yards long, but it's more than enough to do for us - halfway up me and around 30 others are unceremoniously dropped straight off the back of the group in a united lump, Keystone Cops style - stopped as if shot.  There's a point in every half marathon where things get a bit grim, usually about 7 or 8 miles in for me, and funnily enough, that's the bit that appeals to me, the bit where you have to override your urge to slow right down, what the great Mark Allen used to call 'managing fatigue' - today that point has arrived way early!  Ok, stick on the cadence, chop the stride down, breathe and relax, let's get to 5 and have a look - that was the marker back there, missed it, concentration wavering a bit already but 34.20ish, hmmmm, slowing a tad, but regrouped now, feels around 7's still or just outside, let's aim for overall 7's, what would that be, mental arithmetic when you're knackered - nice - ok, about 91.45 - stay on or under 7's overall as long as I can, that's Plan B.  

Then it's just mile to mile, tick them off, chuck a cup of water over my head at 6 miles, vest and shorts soaked in sweat, feeling hot but ok, the miles coming up between 7.05 and 7.10 and I'm in a rhythm that's hard but maintainable now, passing a few which helps.  I reach 9 in 62.51 and then there's a little hill before 10, hit in 70.02, starting to unravel, calf waking up with a few twinges, feel like I'm eyeballs out now, so it's every trick in the book to get home - ok, just a parkrun left from here, easy, 11 miles, ok, just half a lunchtime run, I could do that in my sleep, 12 miles, ok, 7 minutes to the last marker, count them down, where is it, must be soon, I spy it on a corner up ahead, 91.07 when I turn, then a straight run to the gantry, surprisingly get up on my toes for that and stop the clock in 91.53.

 

91.53 - near enough - a bit of life in the old dog yet!  Maybe I can get back under 1.30 with a good winter, haven't been there since 2004, did 1.29 that year and then 1.25  a fortnight later, hmmmm, could that be possible again nearly 10 years on?  Ha ha, come on, dream big, dream big! 

Medal, goody bag, banana, bottled drinks, t-shirt, you collect all these at Cardiff as you walk through a road-wide 300 metre-long cordoned off section between the finish line and the public area - this is class organisation and handles the vast numbers amazingly smoothly with no queueing I could see.  I sit on the pavement two thirds of the way through this bit and wait for my wife Liz, who has also had a good run, sneaking under 1.50.  We're chilled and happy.  Job done.  I heartily recommend the Hanner Marathon Caerdydd!

 

Highly Unnecessary Practical Joke Postscript: I mentioned the finishing straight above and I was pleasantly surprised by the sprint finish I was able to muster over the final 200 yards.  Normally I can't sprint at all at the end of a race - we actually used to say if you can sprint at the end, you haven't run hard enough in the middle, ha ha - but it felt like a strong, powerful finish.  Picture the scene then, when I received the email link to the Marathon Photos website a few days after the event, and I saw that, in addition to pictures, there was a video clip, 25 seconds long, of that very finish, taken from two different camera angles on the line itself.  Wonderful, I can't wait to see that powerful sprint finish, reminiscent of Ovett in his prime.  Brilliant.  But what is this - what skulduggery has gone on here?  Someone has gone to extreme lengths to play a huge practical joke.  A passable doppelganger is on the screen, admittedly wearing my number and identical vest and shorts, but that isn't me, it can't be, because I was up on my toes, with high knee lift, dynamic and strong, and that character is doing what I can only describe as a lollop.  And not even a committed lollop.  No.  A half-arsed lollop.  That looks more like Paul Nihill (ask your mother or Google him) than Steve Ovett.  I, er, I mean he, might not even have been done for lifting as he crossed the line. 

I think someone is following me around doing these elaborate hoaxes, because this sent a chill up my spine as it reminded me of a very similar occurrence in 1997.  I was at college, as a 'mature student', an oxymoron if ever there was one, and we were doing a group project producing a basic animation of a folktale.  We'd filmed it and just had to do the sound, but no one wanted to do the narration.  Eventually I was nominated, somewhat against my will, and I sat in the sound studio and held forth into the mike whilst my fellow students stared at me through the glass, baring various parts of their anatomy to try to get me to corpse.  But to no avail.  I was a model of professionalism and completed the five minutes of scripted narration in a single take, emphasising the burnished, deep timbre and lush, mellow tones of my voice.  Imagine my chagrin then, when I hotfooted it next door for the playback and heard those self-same scripted words spoken, not by me, heaven forbid no, but by a Dalek giving the keynote speech through a Vocoder at a trainspotters' convention.  Despite vigorous and somewhat blasphemous questioning, no one admitted responsibility for the opportunistic mixing-desk distortion which had clearly taken place. 

But I see a pattern emerging.  Just wait until I find the serial japester.