It was my birthday last weekend, and every year on my birthday two things always happen: I get a stinking cold and the weather goes to shit. For some reason, this didn’t deter me from booking a half marathon that fell on my actual birthday or being surprised when I proceeded to get a stinking cold and a forecast for heavy rain and high winds. I started to think that the Worthing Half was going to be a bit of a write-off and the best thing I could do was get round as quickly as possible to claim the quirky seagull medal and to the cocktail bar as soon as possible.
Fortunately, the weather forecast for the preceding day was much better (of course – it wasn’t my birthday then) and my cold was starting to recede, so I had a bit more enthusiasm about our preamble at Littlehampton Prom parkrun, which was continuing my rather pleasing set of south coast seafront venues. I raised an eyebrow when I saw a couple of runners donning pacer vests and mulled over the possibility of asking if the 35 was taken, before deciding that actually, I wanted to run this parkrun as fast as possible. After all, it was a fast and flat course, decent weather and there was no hope of getting a PB in the half so I might as well push myself as hard as I could. I saw someone don the 30 vest and decided on the spot that I was going to see how long I could keep up with him for. I knew I’d come close to running at an appropriate pace for some of the previous week’s run on a harder course, and it would be a good benchmark for when I started devoting my training to the 5k instead of concentrating on half marathons.
30 minute pacer started close to the back, so I decided to edge a bit further forward and aim not to get overtaken. This did mean that I had to keep looking over my shoulder (not a good strategy for not falling over) and I was grateful that the course comprised of two out and back laps where you could assess exactly who was on your heels. I was pleased when I managed to stay ahead for the entire first km, thus running my fastest ever kilometre excluding on the running track, but figured Mr 30 would probably overtake once the crowd had thinned and he had a clear path. But I kept going and another km passed, and another. As I passed Rob travelling in the other direction I tried to mouth “he’s behind me” but only managed to find enough breath from “he’s…” and a wild thumb gesture which seemed to be greeted with confusion.
Two more kilometres and then, with the funnel in sight, a blue tabard with 30 on it slid in front of me. The pacer was putting on a decent sprint finish and of course if there’s one thing I’m useless at (other than running in general) it’s a sprint finish. I tried to follow in his wake the best I could and crossed the finish line with not a drop of breath left to give.
TWENTY NINE FIFTY SEVEN!
Finally, aged 46 years and 364 days, on my 206th parkrun, after ten years of running, I had achieved the holy grail of averageness, a sub 30 5k!
And you know that half marathon that I’d written off? Well, my cold was all but gone the next day and the weather actually turned out to be pretty good, except for a bit of drizzle. The moral of this story should be that you should never write off a race and then blow your chances by knackering yourself by taking two minutes off your parkrun PB the day before. But it isn’t, because actually I finished the Worthing Half in 2:22:47, over six minutes faster than the PB I’d set two weeks ago. I know, I know, I want to punch myself too. Smug, self-satisfied idiot! I’ll shut up now and leave you with some photos.
7:07 