City of Norwich Half Marathon, the aftermath

I made it. I ran my first half marathon, 21 km (or 13 miles). I ran it all, with a very steady pace, just over 5'30" per km on average. Just under two hours (1:58'23") from start to finish, of which I'm very happy given my poor training. The arrival time was a couple of minutes longer because I started pretty far behind.

My legs ache though. They're better now, but yesterday shortly after the race I was limping around like an 80-year-old man (in fact I've seen 80-year-old men in a better shape than that!).

What's next? Who knows. I think I'll keep running, I'm not sure when I'm going to race next time. I'm really tempted to give the City of Norwich Half Marathon another go next year though!

City of Norwich Half Marathon

Tomorrow I'm running the City of Norwich Half Marathon. I had the idea just over three months ago, and I read that three months are enough to prepare for a half marathon. They would be, if you're able to maintain a good training regime.

If, like in my case, you can't, three months become a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, I had two pretty long breaks from running over this time.

The first was when I bought some running shoes that weren't appropriate for me and my legs ended up aching so much that I wasn't even able to run. Two weeks down the drain there.

The second is that my left shin started to hurt and I was afraid I had shin splints (and no, I didn't learn about them through Wikipedia). I stopped running again, until I finally went to a physio who assured me that I didn't have shin splints. Still, three weeks down the drain there, and unfortunately they were the last before the actual race.

Anyhow, the time has come, three months flew by and after a 5 mile run on Wednesday I'm just glad that I still have a few hours to rest before the race. It's going to be very, very tough for me.