Not a PB but an MB

Well. What was I scared of?

Like I said in my previous post, I would approach the Wokingham Half as a "see what happens". Well what happened turned out to be the second fastest time I've ever run.

My strategy was to try and run just at the point where I was not quite out of breath, then to let myself get past that point and actually out of breath on any hilly bits and then try and use my new-found ability to quickly recover on the subsequent downhill bits.

Maybe it was the adrenaline but I seemed to be going a bit quickly in the early stages. So quickly that I kept trying to slow down but then I'd go through another KM and my time was even faster than the previous one. Eventually I figured that I just shouldn't stress about it and it was probably the gale force following wind.

At 6 miles I was feeling pretty good and I seemed to be overtaking people - despite the fact that I started in the right place in the start queue. I had the feeling that my "base pace" was just pretty good, so I relaxed and just kept running.

At 8 miles last year was where the rot set in. (last year I went out really really fast and blew up at about 8 miles and managed to stagger home from there. It was fast overall, but it wasn't pretty and I was so traumatised afterwards that I didn't run for another month or so). This time ... I just kept on going. I was running into the gale force wind at this point, but my pace only slowed by the amount that I would expect because of the wind, not the tiredness.

At 9, 10 and 11 miles I even felt able to try and take a photo for the Runkeeper followers - despite the fact that this meant hobbling hunchback while doing so because of interference between the iphone headphones and the ron hill bright yellow running jacket tied round my waist.

At 12 miles it was raining so hard I didn't want to get the phone out to take a picture, but by that point (well, with 3km to go precisely) I had realised that it was possible to get sub-1.50, and I'd started "going for it" a bit - but not too much, to keep in with my philosophy of not trying too hard on this one.

I was even able to explain to Mrs Badger + Fatipuff, who were thoughtfully placed at the 13 mile marker, that I "Might just get under 1:50" as I huffed past. "SHUT UP and GOOOOO!!!" screamed Mrs Badger lovingly.

And there you have it. I overtook 3 more people in the sprint for the line. Stopped the clock on my various watches and felt very proud of myself. Then we went for a pub lunch and stuffed ourselves stupid! ("You didn't have far to go on that score" was CakeOfGoodHope's comment). Then I was even more smug when I got home and checked the results and my official "chip time" (Bib number 1566, came 1134th) was 30 seconds faster than I'd timed it myself (not sure what's going on there, but I'm NOT complaining) which makes it the second fastest time I've EVER run. YAY! Go BADGER! 1hr 49min 17seconds!!!!!

Thanks for the support, and the texts (even during the race!).

** Oh, and MB? Moral Best! Because I didn't try so hard.