Frank's Running Blog: Half Marathon a Month Challenge #29

Edinburgh Half Marathon - 31st May 2016

A return to the EMF (Edinburgh Marathon Festival). Both of us for the third time. In 2013 this was my very first half marathon event, and then I ran it again in 2015. Chris had previously run it in 2014 and 2015.

Last year's Edinburgh Half Marathon was where I set my current Personal Best time of 01:54:29, but there was no way I was going to get close to that in 2016. For reasons well documented in previous posts I had struggled to record sub 2 hour times since then, managing it only once in Aberfeldy in September 2015.

In fact, I feel my whole philosophy/motivation is changing now, and I seem to be settling in comfortably to a 'finishing lines, not finishing times' approach. So, as well as being my Personal Best, it could be that the May 2015 time in Edinburgh ends up being my Lifetime Best. If it does then I'm quite happy with it. Not too bad for an over 50s bloke who could hardly run the length of himself only 3 years before it.

Way back when it seemed a reasonable idea, I had actually entered the full Edinburgh Marathon for this weekend, and not the half. However, after the PTSD (and injury!) brought on by the Robin Hood Half Marathon back in September 2015, I knew I would never be able to run a marathon in May (or perhaps again), so I wisely entered the half marathon as an alternative.

One of the challenges of the Edinburgh Half Marathon is that it starts at 8am! If you don't actually live in Edinburgh it obviously means that you either have to stay over the night before (which I did in 2013 and 2015), or travel through (from Glasgow in my case) at some god forsaken hour on the Sunday morning.

This year though there was an opportunity for compromise. As Christopher resides in Falkirk, which is a lot closer to Edinburgh than Glasgow, we decided it would be a good idea if I stayed at his on the Saturday night. It would of course be a relatively sensible night, with some pasta carb loading, and perhaps a couple of small beers before an early night in prep for an early start. It didn't turn out that way.

If you have read previous posts in this blog you may, quite reasonably, have got the impression that the running component of the Half Marathon a Month Challenge was secondary to other more social aspects. Obviously when we have completed another monthly half marathon we are imbued with a great sense of achievement, and have a desire to celebrate that achievement. We're also thirsty! It's understandable then that we imbibe a few post run beers/wines in those circumstances. Sometimes we exhibit this behaviour in advance of events, which isn't quite as justifiable, or sensible. This is normally because we are running at a location that is far from home. As we stay there (at least) one night before, we inevitably end up in a pub or two. Examples of this would be Barcelona, Skye, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Mull, Preston and Bratislava!

Our original, fairly sensible, plan started to go awry when Chris said that his Green Party comrades (are they called comrades in the Green Party?) had organised a post election soirée for that very Saturday night. As Chris had put a lot into campaigning during the elections he obviously wanted to attend, and he wangled me an invitation too. Various nonsense was talked about us excusing ourselves early because of our running commitment, but the food, drink and craic was great, so although we were in the first group of leavers, it wasn't exactly early.

After a few hours sleep, it was up for coffee and carbs. Chris's son, Jamie, very generously got up at the same early hour and drove us to the top of Easter Road, fairly close to the start line. Unlike 2015 there were no major storm warnings, but it was still a wee bit chilly at that time of the morning, so the ubiquitous bin bag came in handy again!

It's a huge event, and it takes a while to get from your starting pen to the actual start line, but 7 minutes after the official starting gun we were under way.

Very little to report on the actual run itself. Well maybe a couple of things.

Firstly, there were thankfully no 7km or 8km shut downs for me during this one. However, there was a point at 14km in where my body said that maybe it's time to have a wee walk. Sensibly I listened to my body and took a break from running for about 300 metres. After that I felt great, and I picked up my pace quite significantly in the last 5km of run. I felt really good at the finish line in spite of the previous night's indulgences.

For those familiar with the Edinburgh Half Marathon, you'll know that the last 6km is split into two 'out and back' halves of 3km each. I had worked out that based on his likely finishing time it would be inevitable that I would pass Chris while I was on the outbound 3km and he was on the inbound 3km. The question was, at what point would I see him? It turned out that we passed each other when I was at around 17km and Chris was at 19km, which meant he was about 12 minutes ahead of me at that stage. (Turned out to be 13 mins at the end). Of course this meant that we had both under performed relative to 2015, but Chris not quite as much as me of course! He did concede later that the previous evening's activities had taken a wee bit of a toll, which is almost unheard of for him!

So, there was nothing left to do now but to replenish our electrolytes as quickly as possible. Fortunately at the finishing area of the event there is an excellent selection of fine beers and ciders available for purchase and consumption, and we made the most of this opportunity.