The Reading Half Marathon. Pt. 1

Yes I know its a bit late but since the Janathon finished I sort of lost the will to blog on time.

But hey dee ho, off we go.

I was rather dubious about forking out £31.50 to run 13.1 miles, especially after trying to enter the VLM which would have only cost £30 to enter, for double the milage and double the sense of achievment I would have expected, but after much umming and arring and not a little persuasion from my chum Nicky who had already entered, I decided to go for Reading rather than the slightly cheaper Silverstone Half. And hey, j'know what, I'm bloody glad I did.

Training didn't go quite as well as I'd have liked, in fact, it hardly went at all. Like most people in this country I was affected by the massive snows we had, but I tried to carry on despite it all, with some success I think. It did get quite slippy but only after a few days of all the snow compacting down on the pavements and turning to ice.
Along came Christmas, all was lovely but still damned cold. No running on Chrimbo day for me. Went out on Boxing day instead in nowt but my planned race gear, which turned out to be quite a bad choice, as I had started to develop a bit of a cold, which then turned into a beast of a cold and cough and horridness.
Rest time!!
Had to get as much rest in as poss as I had signed up to do the Janathon, which by the way was the purpose of this blog in the first place, and as the name suggests started in January, on the 1st to be precise.
The Janathon went well until the 22nd when I was cripped by an injury just 0.67 short of the 100 mile mark.

Because of work and things I was unable to rest properly to allow the injury to heal until mid-February when I managed to wangle a weeks leave at very short notice, during which time I spent as little time in footwear as possible. This thankfully did the trick and I was able to go out for a run a month later (HUZZAY) all be it, only a short one. It was by now, only a month to Reading Half - bicycle clip time!!

Between that short 4km run and the 20th March, I only managed to fit in 9 more runs, the longest of these was just over 12.5km, the rest were 5, 6 and 7km's with the odd 9er thrown in. Not the best milage coverage ever for a half I think.

Race day loometh ever closer .

The week leading upto race day I decided I really should try some energy gels. Popped into the local bike shop where I had managed to fetch up some gels previously for use in a TT competition. I was hoping to get the same ones - S.I.S. gels - as I knew these didn't upset the old digestive tubes, they taste like crap but they don't make me crap. Alas, they had no S.I.S. gels in the shop, they had only Powerbar gels. So, Powerbar gels it is then. I bought the last 6 in the shop, 3 sour apple flavour and 3 blackcurrant flavour. I tried one of each on the Tuesday before the race, I had a TT match to play in Abingdon that night and decided to run there, it is just over 5 miles from work. I had 1 gel around 6:15 in the evening just before leaving work, the sour apple one, which by the way really did taste like sour apples which was a surprise, and 1 during my run at around the 4 mile mark. I was very pleased that there were no stomachy tremblings, arrived at TT and played an absolute blinder of a match which I attribute entirely to the gels.
The next day however was a bit different, after very little sleep (I was buzzing all night from the gel, the win and the large bowl of pasta I scoffed when I got in at 10:30 that night) I got up to go to work feeling ultra sore and stiff and not a little bloated. That day I did a silly thing, I had egg sandwiches for lunch.
"So what", I hear you cry, "I have egg sarnies all the time".
Well I don't, hardly ever in fact, my eggies are reserved for brekkers either fried, boiled or scrambled.
Egg sarnies sitting on top of pasta sitting on top of (under-diluted) energy gel, are just not good for your tummy. I spent the rest of wednesday evening and pretty much all of the night in some quite considerable pain. Thought about calling in sick at 2:30 in the morning, but considerate fool that I am, I didn't want to bother getting control all upset and have to call round waking officers up at 5:30 in the morning, so I decided to go in to work. 10am and I'm on the phone to control. It is at this point when I started thinking I may not be able to run on Sunday!
"Hello control, I'd like to go home sick please, and while I'm at it you can put me down as sick for tomorrow (Friday) too".
"Alright mate, will do. I'm sending Surya down to cover, are you ok to hang on there till he gets to you?"
"Yup, no probs".
"Nice one, he'll be with you in an hour".
"Wicked, thanks very much".

1 hour later and I'm off home, 10 mins after that and I'm back in bed a-kip. Spent most of Thursday in bed and slept pretty well during the night too, and I awoke to the blessed sound of my tummy making good growly noises. I stayed at home and just tried to chill as much as poss.
 
Race day arriveth!!