Alloa Alloa

It's been a busy few weeks since returning from York. With Easter fast approaching there has been a lot of work to do in the schools teaching the kids about it. We are also doing our Holy Ghost Walk again on Palm Sunday so this too has led to less time for stuff like this. And with the London Marathon just up the street too, any spare time I have has been handed over to getting fit.

Sunday was the first test of my fitness and the opportunity to step up the pace over a longer distance. The Alloa Half Marathon is a new one for me so i thought I'd use it to see how fit I was. It's a pretty varied course taking you through a council housing estate where the locals offer you their support, into the town which is full of empty shops and then out to the foot of the Ochills where the scenery is well worth the run out. The latter stages take you up a steep 1/2 mile+ hill at 11 miles, and then up another more gradual hill up to 12. The rule of 'what goes up has to come down' seems to have bypassed Alloa's highways, as the road to the finish is flat with no downhill to reward your last 10-15 minutes of hard work. The final 100 meters is great as you come off a roundabout and there it is, out of the blue. I like many others did an eye popping sprint to the finish losing all my dignity with snot and dribble all over my face.

Thanks must go to the Portobello runner Grahame Henry who ran with me shouting at me for the last 6 miles. I have never done a long run with a motivator before and it certainly paid off as I came in with a 1:25:29. I had got my pacing right for a change as I found at 10 miles I was thinking 'only 3 to go, nearly finished' as opposed to my usual feeling of 'how am I going to make it through this last 3'. This was a good start for my road racing season as in all honesty I had only expected a 90 minute run at best. Maybe Grahame should do a podcast for other runners. The only disappointment of the day was that I discovered later that my time was just 2 seconds short of a PB.

The next day the reality of running London hit me...well my door mat. My number and laces (yes you get a pair of red laces) and a whole wad of information that is a bit overwhelming arrived in the post. I'm now entering the zone of looking forward to it and the belief I could beat my Loch Ness time.