Dumfries Half Marathon

This was billed as the oldest race of its kind still organized by the same club. I still have a lovely medal and good memories from doing this as a 25 year old.

I give myself 6 – 7 months to train with this one race in mind. In March I could manage 10k in 60 minutes. By Sept 1st I could manage 10k in 42 minutes, so training went well.
The only hiccup was a cold/infection that meant virtually no runs in the last 2 weeks. It probably meant I lost a bit of endurance, but not much.

THE RESULT
I was 105th in 1:42:15 (7:48 pace average).
I was originally aiming to match my 93 minute PB (June 1991), but on the day I’d have been happy to get around in sub 95 mins. I’d even have put money on getting under 100 mins. However I’m not disappointed, it was a respectable enough time and I learnt a lot (mainly, start slower, and run your own race – see later >>)

INTERESTING STATISTICS
1st Male = 72:50, 1st Female = 84:41, 1st Male 40 = 79:16
There were 220 finishers, about 2/3rds of those were over the age of 40. I finished in 1:42:15 and in 105th place. Of those who beat me, 21 were actually aged over 50, 9 of those were over 55, and 3 of those were over 60 (at least one was 65).

A LITTLE STORY
As I said, I was aiming somewhere between ‘dream time’(sub 90) and ‘no thanks time’ (over 1: 40), and I believed I’d get close to my PB (93 mins).
The first mile was downhill and I hit it in 6:52 which I was excited about as I knew that was the exact pace for an 89:57 half marathon.
It was at this point that another runner struck up a conversation with me. Alistair turned out to be an experienced vet 65 years old, but alas there was no M65 category in this race. He’d won 9 out of 10 races this year and ran in the Inverness Marathon.
By mile 2 (14:15 oops) realizing I’d slowed I left my friend and picked up my pace. By mile 3 he’d caught up with me and suggested we help each other. An old ultra runner’s trick he said, take turns to shelter from the wind and it could save minutes. I went along out of politeness and we were having a great chat too. At 4 miles (29 mins) I realized we were running at 7:15 pace (a 95 minute half marathon) and settled for that. However my new friend suggested changing the lead every 2 lamposts. In hindsight I think this constant change of pace took it out of my legs, but I’m not making excuses (much lol).
By 7 or 8 miles my legs felt heavy and I slowed leaving my much older friend to push ahead. He finished in 79th place in 1:37:34.
THE END / MY VERDICT
I’d been waiting so long to do this race (18 years) that I was just glad to get it out of my system and ‘move forward’. So no disappointment with the time as I know it’ll improve. A slight disappointment however was that the organizers didn’t provide medals to all finishers. I’d have gladly paid extra for this. Instead we got a mug and a bottle of lucozade.
The 2 Best Bits: YouTube – Dumfries Half Marathon 2009