Scandal at the Scottish Half Marathon!

I knew it!*

I received official notification from the race organisers today that the Scottish Half Marathon on 6th September was TOO LONG! 

A whole 292.8 metres too long to be precise. 

*My running app had already indicated that I ran 21.4k rather than the standard distance of 21.1k, as you can see below. 

Ironically this became, and still remains, my Personal Best time for the Half Marathon and, of course, it's only natural to wonder what it might have been for 21.1k.

So I did a few sums....

Firstly I had to select a pace to use as the basis of my 'adjustment', and I narrowed it down to the following candidates.

Fastest Km (#1)    - 05:04 

Slowest Km (#15) - 05:34

Average Km          - 05:20

Final Km                - 05:13

I decided to use my pace during the final kilometre, because intuitively it is likely that I would be closest to this, even in a shortened finish. 

Converting this into seconds per km, and taking the percentage relative to the extra distance, I calculated that I could have finished the race 01:32 earlier if it was over the standard distance. This would give me a unofficial PB of 01:53:09.

Alas this is not my official PB, but it does give an indication of my potential. I now won't be satisfied until I get below that!

I've reproduced the official notification from the race organisers below. They're fixing it for next year, so maybe that's the occasion to set my PB in 2015.

Dear runner

The 2014 Scottish Half Marathon course was measured by an AIMS (Association of International Marathons and Distance Races) accredited course measurer. AIMS work with the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) to ensure the quality of road races worldwide and are the universally recognised organisation to work alongside when having any distance race measured.

Following a number of concerns that were raised about the distance of the 2014 course, I took the decision to have the course remeasured by a second AIMS accredited course measurer. This second measurement was completed in November 2014.

The findings of the second report concluded:

• The course for the 2014 event was set up as per the original report
• There were measurement errors made in the original report resulting in the route for the 2014 event being long by 292.8m.

In order to rectify this issue, the turnaround point between mile 5 and mile 6 has been adjusted for the 2015 event and moved back by 146.4m.

Both AIMS and myself apologise for the inaccuracy in the initial report which was undertaken by an AIMS accredited course measurer. This has fallen well below the standard normally set by AIMS and the standard we look to attain for the event.

I would like to thank you for your patience whilst I have been working hard to resolve the issue and would like to assure all runners that I will continue to work alongside AIMS and the IAAF to ensure that runners receive the highest standards when taking part in The Scottish Half Marathon.

Neil Kilgour
Race 

The Shakespeare Half Marathon

Early next year I intend to post a review of the '2014 Half Marathon A Month' challenge that Chris and I had set ourselves. However, yesterday we completed race number 11 of the challenge, which was the Shakespeare Half Marathon in Stratford upon Avon (SuA). There were quite a few highlights so I thought it was worth a wee post on its own.

We travelled down to SuA on Friday 14th Nov and I wasn't overly alarmed when Chris suggested we should meet in the bar at the station at 11.30am(!)  (I'm going to use the euphemism 'training' to describe many of our activities during and after the trip to SuA)

We left Glasgow Central for Birmingham New Street Station at 12pm on the first part of the journey. In the preceding 30 minutes we had managed to commence our training (2 repetitions) in the bar at the station. Good start.

As we settled ourselves in for the journey south, Chris disclosed that he had packed some more training aids for the trip. The year 1664 seemed to be involved in some way. When those training sessions were completed, we managed to purchase more from the buffet car. Thankfully a rest from training was taken when we were on the packed commuter journey from Birmingham Moor Street to SuA.

On arrival, we quickly checked into our accommodation and headed out for more training at a local restaurant, and subsequently at a place called the Queen's Head, where we watched the Scotland v Ireland game. Finally got to sleep at 11pm. Trained as a newt.

Race day duly arrived and when I awoke I knew instantly that I was in a sub-optimal condition due to over training the previous day. However, a huge, high quality B&B breakfast was munched and we headed along to Long Marston Airfield.

There were four race events on the day. 5k, 10k, Half Marathon, and Marathon. They all started at the same time, which was 10am! The course was set around one 5k lap of the airfield, which you multiplied up depending on the event you were running. None of that different coloured race numbers stuff. It was up to you to count the laps that applied to your event.

At most races you get a bit info about the route, but this one had to be the most esoteric yet. The laps of the airfield are exactly 5k, which is great for two of the events, but of course the half marathon and marathon need additional distances appended to them, and this meant that runners in those events got special briefings. The half marathon briefing involved reference to green bean bags for the lap, and blue bean bags for the finish. It's fair to say that almost no-one understood these convoluted instructions, but the final moments of the half marathon seemed to go without incident, despite the interchanging across bean bags of runners going at different paces!

Also part of the briefing was the news that Long Marston is still a functioning airfield, although it is very rarely used. We were told that if a plane attempted a landing during the race then we would be informed what action to take. Very reassuring!

Part of the runway is also used these days for Drag Racing. This meant that about 1km of it has a thick layer of black rubber. I overheard someone say that if you ran on the rubber it was sticky and would slow you down. I followed this advice and kept to the non rubbery bits, and in hindsight I probably added about 300 metres to my distance as a result (as confirmed by my sports watch). I also now think that, instead of being sticky, a thin film of water on the rubber actually supplied an aqua planing effect to those who ran on it, so that they actually skated for a kilometre :)

After the briefing we headed to the start line via the usual trip to the loos, and we were both raring to go at that point. 

When the race started Chris, as usual, sprinted off into the distance. Usually I either catch up with him at some point or I don't see him again until he's already got his medal and eating a banana. At the risk of giving too much away on who finished first, here's a photo of me taken by Chris when I won the musical statues competition at the event.

Of course this was a race that included four laps, so I was able to gauge exactly how I was doing in comparison to Chris. It became apparent after about 10k that I was going to get nowhere near him! In the end, not only did Chris finish before me, he also ran a Personal Best of 01:55:26 despite all the 'training' we had done! As you can see from his lap split times he actually ran the the 16-20k lap faster than the previous one. Some performance.

Alas, I didn't benefit as much as Chris from the training. I started out at a pace that would have got me a time of 01:56:00 and got slower with each kilometre that passed. For a while I tried to keep going at a pace that would bring me in under 2 hours, but eventually I realised that I wasn't even going to manage that, and was just happy to coast in with the less impressive time of 02:03.57.

The moral of this story, boys and girls, is don't overtrain prior to race day. (Unless you're Chris).

10k PB News!

I'm happy to post that at the Jimmy Irvine Bella 10k event at Bellahouston on 8th November, I took a whole 3m 15s off my 10k personal best. It now stands at 51m 19s. I reckon the reason for this is that I hadn't actually run an official 10k event for 14 months, but I had clearly been improving while doing other events. I knew I was already running around 53m or so during the first 10k of some half marathons, so it's not that big a surprise I suppose. Still delighted. 

Next year I'm going to focus on significantly reducing all my PBs, so this might make me revaluate what I should aim for in the 10k. That's for another post though. 

The Bellahouston Road Runners (@bellaroadrunner) event was excellently organised with a turnout of 519 runners. I ran it with two pals from work, Ken and Niall. Their PBs for the 10k are both faster than mine so it was pleasing that we all finished not too far apart from each other. The weather was also conducive to a good run, as you can see from this pre-run photo. 

Tomorrow I'm heading down to Stratford-upon-Avon with Chris for the Shakespeare Half Marathon, which takes place on Saturday 15th November.  It's the eleventh of our '2014 Marathon A Month' mission. Undoubtedly this is a symptom of a midlife crisis. In a future post I'll be looking back at the highlights of each of the half marathons. The experiences have been varied to say the least.

Later.

F

Just Do It

Initial Steps

This second blog post is about how I ended up running regularly, and I can't emphasise how unlikely that was just months before my first running event. 

I hope that this post in particular will encourage you to take up, or get back to, regular walking/jogging/running. If you're capable of doing it then why not do it?!*

*Up front I should acknowledge that lots of folk prefer sports such as cycling or swimming for their cardio fitness. I suspect the same experiences and basic principles will apply across the different disciplines, so please contribute what you think runners can learn from your particular sport. 

For me, taking part in running events came about indirectly as a result of the weight loss and fitness programme I started following in January 2012. Part of that included some walk/jog combinations on the treadmill, with the jogging element gradually increasing in both distance and speed (but not at the same time!).

By May 2012 I noticed that I was able to jog continuously for about 3.5k on the treadmill at speeds around 9kph. This ability had crept up on me without me really noticing it.

At about the same time I saw an advert in the gym for something called the Kilomathon taking place in Edinburgh at the end of September 2012. It had two (intriguingly odd) distances of 6.55k and 13.1k that you could run, so I made the bold step of entering the shorter event  and set about training to gradually increase the distance that I would be able to run without stopping. 

A memorable moment during my training came when I ran my first 5k, which I completed in 00:31:55 at the fairly gentle pace of 6m23s/k. Basically I just ran 2.5k away from the house and then back again. I was pleased not only with completing the distance, but also running outdoors for the first time since struggling twice around Hogganfield Loch * at school in 1981. 

*I checked out the circumference of Hogganfield Loch using WalkJogRun and it's 1.9k, so we were running 3.8k. Felt further.

5k is a great distance to build up to if you're starting out or restarting your running. It's even a good distance to incorporate into your training if your focus is more on the longer events such as half marathons.

Here's a great article in Runner's  World about how to build up to a 5k or use it for training, if you're a regular runner.

Of course there are also the 100s of 5k Parkrun events which take place across several countries EVERY Saturday morning. 

Anyway, the day of the Kilomathon arrived and I made my way to the start with my binbag* over my running gear, while my support team of Clare, Antonia and Scarlett headed to the finish line at Murrayfield stadium. (Antonia and Scarlett actually took part in the next Kilomathon, but that's for another post). 

*Wearing a bin bag  is many runners' favourite, discardable method of keeping dry and warm before the start of events in wet and cold countries, like Scotland! 

Back to the run...which went really well as far as I was concerned. My time to cover the 6.55k was 00:39:07 at a pace of 05m58s/k!! Under 6 minutes per kilometre! This was the first time I had run at (just) over 10kph  for a reasonable distance. 

The girls were there to cheer me into Murrayfield stadium, and they had tipped off the stadium announcer (a Radio Forth DJ , I think) so I received a fantastic welcome as I crossed the finish line in one of sport's great stadia. 

With the endorphins flowing at mega levels (yes, this actually happens) I felt like a million dollars. The look was somewhat different though...

If you had said to me in December 2011 that by September 2012 I would be 12 kilos lighter and taking part in running events, then I would have suspected you were drinking as much New Zealand Pinot Noir as I usually do! However, it happened, and it became a springboard for me to take up running regularly. It also brought great family, friends, social and fitness benefits that weren't even on the radar before.

In future posts I'll bore you to death with my own progress as a runner, from the point of my first Kilomathon. In those posts I'll also cover less egocentric topics such as training, nutrition, avoiding injuries, dealing with injuries and general running tips. By the way, please don't let the injury bit put you off. It's a sport, and these things happen. However it's a non-contact sport (excluding the ground), so a lot of injury prevention is in your own hands*. 

*legs

I'll also introduce my good friend (and double marathon runner) Chris, who got back into the running groove and became a big part of what I have achieved to-date. 

I hope this blog post has made you think about maybe...

• starting regular walking/jogging/running and trying to continually improve in baby steps 
• getting back into the groove if you've enjoyed walking/jogging/running in the past, but have just lapsed a wee bit

If it has then please feel free to share your experiences here!

Later.

F

Future Events Entered...

- Jimmy Irvine Bella 10k. Glasgow 08/11/14

- Shakespeare Half Marathon. Stratford-upon-Avon 15/11/14
- Santa Dash 5k. Glasgow 07/12/14
- Edinburgh Marathon. Edinburgh 31/05/15