Hackney Half Marathon 5#in14

It’s been a month since the excellent Bracknell Half Marathon. May\June have been a busy months with quite a few 10kms and other events completed.  

Hackney half is a brand new event and it was quite a morning! We woke up early to travel up to London and it was an epic trip just to get to the event. The weather forecast was for dry hot conditions and this was worrying because we had not run in the heat for a while. We had a quite a walk to Hackney Marshes from the tube and we made the bag drop with only 10 minutes to spare. We lined up with 10,000 other runners in the sun and began our run though the roads of Hackney & Stratford for number 5#14.

Both me and James set off at a steady pace in the opening miles and tried to run to the conditions. The streets where packed with supporters and we began with a nice 2 miles through tree lined and shaded roads. Our 14#14 shirts where again getting shout outs from the crowd. After 5 miles I was feeling the heat and James was looking quite strong it was important to take on water and they had those pouches that where tricky to get into I ended up spraying the person next to me with mine.

The 10km marker is always a good indication as to how you are running and we both passed it together in 50:26 probably a bit too quick as the heat was already taking its toll on me. As we approached 8 mile we had a conversation about getting to the Lucozade stop and then re-grouping. Well when I got to that point I was really hurting and James after taking on liquid was looking like he could go on with the pace. From then on I was in catch up James was getting away from me and I was struggling to keep up.

The 10 mile point the course turned into the Olympic park area this should have been the best part of the run but with the sun beating down James out of sight it was not fun at all. The course was very loopy in the last 3 miles and I was very disconcerting to run back and forth around an unshaded undulating and uninspiring part of the Olympic park.

I was hoping that James was struggling because I was on\off walking for the last few miles and really had to dig out the last mile and it seemed to go on forever. This felt like the hottest conditions i had run in and as i turned into the finishing straight i knew James had again had the better of me. I found him in a heap on the floor and we had a long post run chat about the heat and the walking and the last 3 miles!! It was decided that it was probably the hardest half so far this year and we both had a disappointing run. But under the conditions and with the last 3 miles being very challenging i guess we will live to run another day!! Next run will be the Eudure24 I expect that will be even more of a hardcore challenge!!

James 1:52:26 

Duncan 1:55:40