Potholes, Puddles & Stones - Shakespeare Half

Another half marathon in the bag and another PB. Which is a minor miracle considering the conditions at the Autumn Shakespeare Half today. It's held at the Shakespeare County Raceway which is a drag strip and air field in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The start is at the beginning of the drag strip and it was really wet with a lot of standing water. Now, I've never walked on a drag strip before but the surface is covered in rubber from all those spinning wheels so all those trainers on a wet rubber floor made for a very squeaky start.

The forecast had been for heavy rain, right up until the day before and I drove though some pretty heavy stuff on the way there this morning but thankfully it held off for the race itself. However, there were, of course, lots of puddles to contend with and the further I got into the race it became clearer that it was going to be madness to try and dribble through certain parts of the course. Just have a look at some of these pictures I took after I'd finished:

Not even the very worst London marathon road is going to look half as bad as this so I didn't worry too much about occasionally picking the balls up, although I did dribble through that grassy bit of track.

Before I started the race I got chatting to a guy called Tomas Bolton who ran the 2015 London Marathon dressed as a police phone box. He was making a world record attempt that year and as such is still in touch with Jerry Knox whose record I'm after. I've always wondered if Jerry had got wind of my plans to take his record from him. I get a good few page views from the USA each time I post. Well I guess he'll probably know now.
Hello Jerry! I'm coming for you!!! And thanks for the inspiration.

Anyway, back to the race. A bloody dreadful surface. Grass patches, cracks, holes, puddles, gravel, stones, standing water everywhere. It was superb obstacle avoidance practice but mentally draining planning a route through it all for both feet and balls. And having all that standing water makes it much harder work, as even if I avoid the puddles (which I didn't always) the surface water still takes some of the bounce out of the balls so I have to push them harder into the ground.

I was a bit worried about my hands as now it's getting cold outside and despite frequently applying hand cream they're really drying out and last night my right thumb split. I taped it up with waterproof plasters but by the time I'd finished the first 3 mile lap the ball had scuffed them off. Fortunately I didn't do any further significant damage to it and it didn't bleed (hang on while I get more hand cream).

I only looked at my watch once at around the 10 mile mark. I'd just been running at a pace I thought I could cope with. So when I realised that I was close to finishing in my 01:55:00 target time I was pleasantly surprised. In the end I finished in 01:56:39 which was 25 seconds quicker than I did the Bristol Half in and a new balls PB. Just after I'd finished a fellow runner thanked be for motivating him to finish ahead of me. He wasn't going to be beaten by a crazy man dribbling two basketballs.

I don't have any more races with balls lined up until Silverstone now. I think I'll just concentrate on upping the miles around Norman Park. If the weather is agreeable I'll take the balls out and if it isn't I'll just to a regular long run around the streets on a Sunday. There's still plenty of training time but it's only just over five months until race day!

Post race, overlooking the finish

Still Got It

So I've been back training for two weeks after a four week enforced layoff and it's feeling pretty good. This last week in particular has felt great. A good night in group 10 at Petts Wood Runners (PWR) on Tuesday where we did about 6.5 miles and I had plenty to give at the end and another great track session from Mike Reeves on Thursday.
I finally managed to get a response out of the people from the Autumn Shakespeare Half and I do have a place next Saturday. In their defence they said they had responded several times before but I don't know what happened to their emails. I couldn't find anything in any of my in-boxes including the spam filter. The race is just over 4 laps of the Shakespeare County Raceway so it should be a good surface and the field will be considerably smaller than Copenhagen and Bristol. With this in mind I'm going to set myself a target of going sub 01:55:00.
I haven't been out running with the balls since Bristol but I figured it's more important to get my stamina back at this point. I know a half marathon is no trouble with the balls so today I went out to simply run the half marathon distance in a moderate time. I set off in glorious autumn sunshine thinking I'd run at just over 8 minute miles and make sure that didn't fall below 9 minute miles. Just past 3 miles I bumped into self-titled Old Scrote Tim Springett from PWR who was running my way. Rather annoyingly Tim is both older and faster than me so we ended up running closer to 7:30 minutes per mile for a couple of miles (I'm happy for Tim to be older than me but less happy with how much faster than me he is). Tim left me at about 5 miles and I slowed just a little.
It was a really nice day to be out running this morning and I even felt pretty good running up Farnborough Hill at about 10 miles. I finished the 13.1 miles in 01:48:56 which is an average of 8:19 minutes per mile.A good comfortable run to set me up for next weekend.
I did re-inflate my basketballs this week and managed to get out early one evening in the last of the daylight but from now on it's going to be dark by the time I finish work. So I had a chat with the headteacher at my son's school to see if she'd let me use the gym in the evenings. She seemed pretty positive about it as long as they don't have any bookings so I'm waiting to hear back from the office as to which days I can get in there. It keeps me sharp messing about with two ball tricks and drills so it's a good thing to do when I'm giving my legs a rest.
I will need to get the balls out again this week to get the pressures right as they're both a little flat and I'm off up to a friend's house in Burford on Friday night, ahead of the race on Saturday. I'll post again next Sunday to report back on the race and whether or not I managed to break 1:55:00.

Finished in Whitehall Rec. Sun still shining.