Half Marathon a Month Challenge #30 - Hadrian's Wall June 2016

Hadrian's Wall Half Marathon - 26th June 2016

I found this event when browsing through one of those running sites which lists races taking place across the UK each month. I think it was this one..... 

http://www.marathonrunnersdiary.com/races/uk-marathon-list.php

It was an attractive proposition for a few reasons...

1. It wasn't too far away 
2. It was set in a very nice part of the world, taking place in and around Northumberland National Park
3. There was the historical aspect to it. Romans, etc...
4. It was more than just your standard road race plod, as it had a mixed terrain route. (We had never run on a course like this before)
5. Because of reason 4. there would be no pressure on achieving PBs! The only fair comparison would be to any finishing times from the same event in the future.

Because of the location of the event (in the middle of nowhere!) we had to drive there. After I picked Chris up about 6.30am, we made our way south, stopping briefly for coffee and carbs at an M74 service station en route.

Thanks to the wonders of SatNav we had no problems in finding the race starting point at Haltwhistle. As you can see from this picture of Chris, we got there nice and early before almost any other runners had arrived.  

It was a lovely morning (but very chilly), and we took in the surrounding scenery until our fellow competitors started to turn up in numbers, and the start time of the race duly arrived. 

I had been told that although there was a significant part of this course which was run on grass, and over stiles and the like, that it wasn't classed as a true 'Trail Run', because there were some sections of real roads, and tracks in the national park. However, as you can see from these photos published by Sport Sunday , there was still a big 'trail' flavour to this race! 

I was loving this event! The scenery was great, there were interesting aspects to the course that no other previous event had. (e.g. climbing over walls and fording small streams), and I even spotted some wild horses grazing happily next to the running route.

In terms of performance, well, as the first part of the race mainly takes place over the grassy route in the national park, there are plenty of opportunities to take a wee breather when climbing over walls, etc, so by the time I'd reached the forest tracks in the second half I still had plenty of energy conserved. In fact, as you can see from the Pace Graph below, I ran the second half of the race faster than the first half! I'm not sure if I have ever done this in a half marathon before. I'll have to check the archives.

The route at the finish had a nice steep hill at the end, just to make sure you remembered that you had done some proper running that day. I could see Chris had already finished and was at the top of the hill to greet me. The only thing left to do was to pick up our souvenir running shirts of the event and head back north.

You may have noticed that, unlike with most of our other half marathons, there was a distinct lack of alcohol involved at any time either before or after this race. It can be done you know! 

Results:

Chris - 02:19:49

Frank - 02:27:13