Nottingham Half Marathon

So today, my limp around the Nottingham Half Marathon. The first problem is getting there. My usual short cut across Castle Bridge Road by the Sainsburys’ superstore has been closed off and I headed into town having already seen the epic queue along the ring road. Getting within a mile was fine; getting that final mile took about forty five minutes. With no police or marshals directing traffic, it was every man, woman and Robin Hood for themselves which simply made things worse.

When I finally got there, it was long after my father had arrived and it’s not often that happens. Once on site, the organisation is better and the atmosphere building nicely. After pointing my father in the direction of a good spot to watch the start, I slot myself into the sub 1:40 red zone, along with the multitude of different coloured numbers that were already lining up there. My pace was optimistic due to the state of my ankle, not sure what everyone else’s excuse was but at least I was of the right colour.

We start and my ankle feels ok at first as we head past Nottingham Railway Station, sadly currently hidden behind a ton of scaffolding. Then we embarking on the long hike out of town along Queens Drive, a dull dual carriageway lined with business premises. I pass L and the boys who are supporting at the two mile point and then see someone short cut back to the start, presumably to be an early retirement. I still feel ok at that point, so I don’t join them but within a mile the ankle starts to throb and I wonder if I’ll make it round or not.

I hobble badly for a couple of miles but then I guess it goes numb because I don’t have too much trouble after that. So then it’s just a question of surviving the course. Unfortunately the new course, introduced last year, is not very inspiring and by now we’re running through, for no apparent reason, the Boots Industrial Estate. The estate is closed to the public and there were about 10 hardy folks supporting us in the whole of that desolate wasteland. Them and the tumbleweed of course.

Sadly the support out on the whole course is also a lot less than it was due to less places of civilisation now being included on the route. Even Wollaton Park, which was always a good spectator point, that pulled the crowds and therefore helped spur on the runners, is no longer include.

In an attempt to be ‘fast n flat’, the new course misses out any such scenic bits if they are within sneezing distance of mild incline, meaning the new route also does little to promote the best of Nottingham. The old course was much better and even that didn't take in enough of Nottingham.

I had hoped to pace myself around behind some lass in a Robin Hood suit but although the organisers have encouraged people to dress up as RH in an attempt to set a world record, they all seem to be men. There’s not even a scantily clad Maid Marion to be found.

After a bit of scenery around the university and not of the Maid Marion variety, it’s another dull plod back towards the city centre. We are turned away before we get there of course but if you're quick, you do get a glimpse of the castle on your left before they finish us off, literally, with a two mile out and back slog along Victoria Embankment.

This really tests your mental preparation. I was lucky I had L and the dogs there for a quick pat and a snog. That spurred me on for a while but even that wore off as the turning point seemed to get further and further away. Once there, you were in the unenviable position of knowing exactly how far it was back the other way. Evil stuff.

One thing I haven’t dealt with before are the new water pouches and perhaps I should have watched the video they supplied on how to work them. I couldn’t get enough water out of mine, while other folk seemed to get too much. Still, I’m sure they’re a good idea. I just need some practice.

Finally the finish arrives, with lots of people sat in the grandstands and a good jovial commentator announcing people as they come in. I’m handed my medal and goodie bag. Suddenly it’s almost worth it. Still no t-shirt in the goodie bag though.

Then we sit in the stands ourselves, watching everyone else come in. Including two women with orange numbers doing it in charity t-shirts who started beside me in the sub 1:40 red zone but came in at about 2:45, an hour after I’d finished.

John 'Tommo' Thompson Memorial Ride

The conditions were a touch Autumnal for the John 'Tommo' Thompson Memorial Ride today. e.g. it was well chilly and it looked like it was going to bucket it down any moment. I think the aim by most people, us included, was to get up to the start at Carsington Water and get on with asap before the heavens opened.

As it happened they opened almost immediately after we had started but thankfully only lightly. It then fined up and stayed dry until we were safely in the car heading home afterwards. I hear some of the folk on the longest route weren't so lucky.

The route, around the Peak District and the Staffordshire Moorlands, consisted of hills, hills and more hills. Bloody hard it was. I got the distinct impression that the organisers did not attempt to avoid any climbs whatsoever and even went out of their way to find the most fearsome ones.

The route took us over part of the Ashbourne Half Marathon course that I did last year. I couldn't believe I managed to run up those hills.

I attempted the 76k route, L did the 45k. Both had a feed station at Thorpe but by differing routes. I beat L there by ten minutes over a slightly longer route but then her shorter route home beat me back to the finish.

In between I had an altercation with a wasp, that kindly embedded itself in my face by it's sting as I bombed downhill at something approaching 40mph. There it hung there laughing as I attempted to either shake it off or to slow down and stop. Eventually I managed the later putting my leg down on a verge resplendent in deep nettles in the process. Double ouch. I nearly hit the tarmac but managed to stay upright, just or else that would have been a triple ouch.

The sting wasn’t pleasant and started to swell up pretty quickly, I always get a reaction to stings but it didn’t get really bad until much later. After I had valiantly completed the course and got back to Carsington where there was plenty of very welcome tea and cake.

Budapest Half Marathon

We skip the hotel breakfast and head into the City Park, where it proves to be much easier to find the race HQ in the daylight. It’s already warm, even before the 9am start, and I think it’s going to get warmer.

There are hundreds of foreigners in the race and we get chatting to a chap from Milton Keynes who is currently working in Budapest. We stop talking to him when he indicates he intends to run the course in 1:32.

At 9am, we’re off and running back across Heroes' Square, then most of the first four kms are in a straight line down the World Heritage site of Andrassy Avenue. I’m not too sure what constitutes a World Heritage site but I’ve certainly never ran down one before, so that was pretty cool.

Then we hit or rather cross the Danube on the Chain Bridge. The Danube divides the two districts of Buda and Pest and now we are in the former. Most of the course takes place along the banks of this mighty river, on one side or the other, until after 16km we head back to the outskirts, across Heroes' Square again and to the finish back at the City Park.

It was one of the most scenic races I’ve ever ran. Budapest is an impressive city steeped in multicultural history. From the Romans through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dalliance with the Nazis and the communist occupation via Ghengis Khan and Attila the Hun, after whom most of the streets seem to be named.

When I remembered to look at all this impressive-ness it was a handy distraction to take my mind off the suffering. As I’m wearing my GB Olympic top I get a few chants of ‘Go Team GB’ which also helps with the morale.

The temperature was by now approaching 30 degrees but luckily the drinks stations are plentiful, except oddly there are none in the first 5k but thereafter they are everywhere. They have also given everyone a sponge and there’s a bucket to dump it in at every drinks station, so I take full advantage of this.

The temperature rises higher still as we pass the cheerleaders...

It's all oddly very un-PC, so well done Hungary for that and the girls do an outstanding job of raising the morale of at least the male runners.

It’s a largely flat course but one thing I’d forgotten about was that we’d be running in metric which didn’t help the pacings per mile that I’d got in my head. Some on the hoof mathematics made me decide that 4:45 per km would see me home in a reasonable time. Unfortunately I regularly missed this target and was surprised, but delighted, to find my mathematics a bit off as I came home in a satisfying 1:43:11.

After a bit of lying down in some very crap grass. It’s all crap actually, it’s like MD has been around the whole park wearing it out, I head back towards Heroes Square to watch L hobble home. She shouldn’t really be running at all and hasn’t trained, so just finishing is an achievement.

Just one more thing to get and that’s our race t-shirts. Which were rather bizarrely being handed out, not at the finish or with the start packs, but at Nike's shop a mile away in Budapest's West End Arcade. It takes us a while to find the arcade but then when we do there is no mistaking that we are in the right place as we join a very slow moving queue.

There's probably only about 60-70 people in the queue but it takes 70 minutes to get to the front because they are making everyone sign for their shirt. This is almost as long as it took me to run the race. Once there we are told only XS and XL men's sizes are left or they’ll order our size in and we can pop back in a few weeks to pick it up. Like that’s going to happen.

John Fraser 10

I would have liked to have ran another half marathon today but for various reasons that wasn’t happening. Races were either full, too far away or I had missed the closing date due to being away. So today I drop down to 10 miles and the John Fraser 10 which is a jaunt around the Leicestershire countryside from a place called Countesthorpe. I’d heard of the race but I had to look Countesthorpe up on the map because I’d never heard of it despite its close proximity to Leicester itself.

Race HQ was at the local college before they took us out on to the road for the start where 500 or so of us caused quite a traffic management problem. L is supporting this morning, saving her injuries from further jarring ahead of Budapest next weekend.

The route was pretty much how I like them, pretty dull. It was an out and back with a loop on the end through countryside, mainly on country roads with a single track tarmac section which wasn’t used by traffic. It was all very well marshalled and with plenty of drinks stations (in cups). One thing it wasn’t though was flat. You were either climbing a hill or descending one. None of the hills on their own were particularly evil, it was just that there was barely a flat piece of road in the whole 10 miles.

I didn’t start particularly fast and as the terrain eventually took its toll, there wasn’t much chance of improving on that. So my finishing time of 1:18 is very much on the slow side.