Sheffield Half Marathon

Today I’m entered in the Sheffield Half Marathon, which is one of my favourite races, and I intend to run it despite suffering with a locked up calf as recently as Monday. I’ve had the emergency massage and plenty of rest (well five days), now it’s just a question of crossing the fingers and winging it. If it goes wrong it doesn’t really matter as I don’t have any other imminent races in the diary.

I don’t wing it very far. In fact, the more I warm up the tighter the calf gets. It would probably be sensible to have pulled out then but that’s not really my style.

When the start is delayed, this simply gives me more time to warm up and to hopefully run off the problem or to make it worse. I’ve never been able to run it off before and at Nairn the full 13.1 miles didn't shift it. Today is no exception. 

So by the time we start my calf is well and truly seized up but I give it a go anyway. Drawing on the experience from Nairn, I decide to see if I can hobble the first mile. When I’ve got that far I decide to try and hobble as far at the end of Ecclesall Road where the climbing starts. I get that far and then think, why not see how it is on the hill, you know the four mile long hill. So I do and so on. It’s amazing what you can achieve.

I’m actually rather good at hobbling and it doesn’t actually get any worse until about the 12 mile point, when it gets really sore, but then there’s only a mile to go...

So I made it round but obviously it wasn’t quick but as I say this is one of my favourite races. See you next year.

Sheffield Half Marathon

I do like the Sheffield Half Marathon and I did like the old course but there is something rather beautifully masochistic about the course change they introduced three years ago when Run For All, the legacy organisation for the late Jane Tomlinson, got involved and decided to embrace Sheffield’s inner hilliness.

It’s possibly the way they quietly ratchet up the intensity as they take you out of the city along Arundel Gate and onto the long stretch that is Ecclesall Road, which all takes place on a slight incline. Then the slight gets less slight and much more significant as the road rises skywards, getting gradually steeper and steeper. Until by mile four you are on your hands and knees crawling up the one mile stretch that they call the 'King\Queen of the Hill' before eventually you can kiss the tarmac at the top of Ringinglow. From where you look forward to plummeting down... the scenic flat bit.

Allegedly, after the scenic flat bit, it’s all downhill to the finish, only it isn’t. It remains frustrating undulating and deliciously painful right up to the finish line.

Plus there is an additional nuisance factor this year, a dose of very unseasonal Yorkshire weather. Obviously in Sheffield in April you expect wind, rain and maybe hail or possibly snow, or all four at once but this year Sheffield is struck by a heat wave which really wasn’t that welcome.

I survive though and cross the finish line where I am bested by last year’s time by a three mere seconds but you still can’t beat it as a location for your Sunday morning jog and they’ve even given us a wearable t-shirt this year.

My only wish is that they would put as much effort into the mile markers as they do the km markers that map out the last 10k, for which there is an additional prize. These are all nice sail banners whereas the thirteen mile markers appear to be an assorted collection of whatever was lying around at the back of the race director’s garage.

Run For All Sheffield 10k

The clocks go back this morning so this gives us an extra hour in bed to mentally prepare ourselves or otherwise for today’s Sheffield 10k. This is a different Sheffield 10k to the Great Run organised one and is run by Run For All, they of the Jane Tomlinson Foundation, and it’s sponsored by Asda.

These folk also organised the Sheffield Half which I ran earlier this year and the course takes the same route out along Ecclesall Road but then instead of disappearing up a big hill into the Peak District it skirts around Endcliffe Park before return back along Ecclesall Road.

Despite the omission of the ‘Peak District’ this is still a seriously undulating route and a real challenge. Although the biggest challenge of all is keeping up with the 45 min pacer which shouldn’t really have been a problem for me considering my current form.

The pacer, however, sticks to his 4:30 per km pace with metronomic precision even on the kilometres that are completely uphill. This means that his initial group of around 30 runners is gradually reduced attritionally to, well, probably nothing. I'm guessing here as I hung on longer than most but couldn’t stay the distance either.

The inverse of this is that when the course starts heading downhill later on he is hamstrung by his 4:30 pace meaning most of us catch him and pass him. I finish in 44:55, so who needs dodgy pacers. Perhaps we should have paced him?

After I have finished, I notice there is no queue at the massage tent which is a rare thing indeed. I quickly go and get my rucksack back from the baggage area, which works seamlessly this time, then I sign up for a session on my calves. I must say that I get outstanding service from Sheffield Hallam’s physiotherapy department who supply a girl for each leg and it’s well worth the £2 charity donation I give them.

Just a word for the goodie bag which was excellent and weighed down with snackie things.

Sheffield Half Marathon

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 13th May 1940.

Of course he never, to my knowledge, ran a half marathon.

Today we’re in Sheffield, without the dogs, as we’re expecting a fair hike from parking at the Sheffield Arena to the start line inside the Don Valley Stadium. The distance is not too bad in the end but the race isn’t particularly dog friend. This is no great surprise with nearly 6000 entrants.

Starting the race in the stadium is a nice idea, if a little congested. After which it’s a three or so mile tour of some of the least aesthetically inspiring parts of Sheffield. Things pick up when we leave all that industrial dereliction behind and head into the city centre. Which apart from being much better on the eye becomes a bit of a tour of some of our favourite Sheffield watering holes - Ahh the Old House, the Devonshire Cat, over there the Sheffield Tap etc etc.

Also once in the city centre the crowd come into play and the sheer weight of numbers is worth an extra gear. Mind you if the city centre was an extra gear, the Ecclesall Road was a whole extra engine. The support there was simply awesome.

 

There are downsides of course. A race of this stature shouldn't have drinks in cups, which are clumsy and difficult to drink from. I have to stop to drink from them, which costs time. They should also offer sports drinks but the sponges were a positive. I do like a sponge.

I also didn't think the mile markers were terribly visible and missed a lot of them. This made it difficult to keep track of how I was doing and perhaps is why, rather unbelievably, with 2 miles to go I was on for a 1:41.

Then nine minutes to the 12 mile marker seemed to have put paid to anything under 1:43 or so I thought. As the 13 mile point and the condemned Don Valley came into view a few minutes earlier than expected, I come to the conclusion the ‘12’ had wandered from where it was meant to be and a time of 1:41:46 is mine.

Even I’m impressed. I would have taken a time 1:45 in my arms and snogged the life out of it. A 1:41, considering my current state of unfitness, is well... in for a very good night indeed.

L of course has been just as injured, if not more so than me. She had threatened to take a book around to read as she was ambling round. Yet, I think, even she was pleased with her performance. 

We both get a post-race massage which should help prevent those injuries reoccurring.

The stadium finish was great and it’s scandalous that the stadium will not be around to host the race next year. Which poses the organisers a bit of a challenge for the future. Good luck with that.

The wristband at the end was also a nice touch. Not that I spotted them but L did and got me one. Sadly though both the small t-shirts and more horrifically the water had run out by the time she finished and there were still almost a thousand people behind her.

On the whole a well organised and enjoyable race with a nice-ish route, good bits and bad bits like most races. I guessed a race in Sheffield was unlikely to be flat and it certainly wasn't but it was probably as flat as they’re going to get it.