Wake Up. Kick Ass. Repeat.
aka, second half
I’m just surprised nothing went catastrophically wrong for me. Seriously.
This isn’t the time when I talk to the world about the time when I ran my first half marathon, but let’s just say this was a dream compared to that. The morning involved this simple checklist:
[ ] Wake Up
[ ] Kick Ass
[ ] Repeat
[x] Wake Up
Getting up was the easy part. 6:30 alarm which gave me time to eat with a couple of hours spare until race start which happened to be at 9am. I ate, unpacked and packed my gear and headed out on the bike to the race village. Learning from previous mistakes I left plenty of time but that was still cutting it fine. There was quite the formidable queue for toilets. I wish I took a picture because even at music festivals I’ve not quite seen anything like it. There were a lot of toilets but nowhere near enough for the amount of runners — it all got a bit tight with 10 minutes to go and seemingly half the race village in this queue. I digress. Unimportant.
I packed fairly light, the only thing I didn’t have with me was gels as Lena had picked some up for me. Obviously with the queueing episode and awful phone signal in the race village getting hold of these gels just before the start of the race proved a little trickier than I thought, but with a few minutes to spare managed to get the gels, some wise words and a have fun hug.
So with the gels strapped in I made my way towards the race pen. Or the attempt of a race pen. In all honesty the pens were far too crowded. I caught Jason, Rachel, Kevin and a few other RunDem at the edge of the sub 1:30 pen and it initially looked like we were going to steeplechase our way over the gate. Luckily, with a couple of minutes to go they opened a side gate and we filtered in.
[x] Kick Ass
I wasn’t actually nervous anymore. I had been — leading upto this, but no more. The countdown started, I turned up my music… and… go.
So many people! I forgot about how messy the start of a race is, but because I knew my first mile time would be lost, I figured I had to go quick out the gate. The thing is, going quick out the gate when a lot of people in front of you have the opposite idea is quite hard. I must have won some sort of sidestepper of the year award for my performance in the first half a mile. Having to pick mentally 10 yards ahead which direction to sidestep into is quite distracting. My playlist started really damn well and I could barely settle into it.
By the time I could see the first mile sign I’d settled into a rhythm. This was needed. It took alot of energy ‘breaking out’ so all I could really do was keep my fingers crossed and hope that somehow that was under 7 minutes. Strava told me it was 11 minutes (it wasn’t) so I guess I’ll never know.
It may have been this point where I caught a glimpse of Paul which was great to see someone so early in the race — especially good considering the patience he showed me on Thursday night track sessions. So now things began to look like a normal run. By which I mean it was the second mile and I was already questioning why this was a good idea. This is a usual second mile thought but it was twice as hard as the heat… was incredible. The start of the race I’d been so distracted by sidestepping I hadn’t realised how hot it was. Now with nothing else to think about, it was all I could think about.
“Fuck this, I’m sticking in the shade” I thought, so I did.
That was a fairly decent strategy. And since the start of my long runs are a series of Jedi Mind Tricks, the next one was to make it fun. Find RunDem is what I settled on and decided to speed up until I found a group of us and settle behind to keep some rythm. I ended up seeing Felix, Sorrell & Co. From Tuesdays runs I figured they’d be a solid group of people to keep pace behind, and as long as I felt good with the pace then to stick with it. Combined with my (did I say excellent?) song choices, I was set until half way.
Miles 3-8 were fairly uneventful for me. I wasn’t really running with anyone, as was my intention so I didn’t really have distractions. It was at this time I was able to appreciate the support — it was really good. Some did have the just stepping out of Tesco and this was happening so decided to watch kind of vibe, which I can’t hate on because support is support! Was also really lifting to have people I absolutely did not recognise cheer “keep going RunDem!” as I ran past, that and the millions of signs from all the running crews dotted around the route kept my spirits high through the first half.
This is probably a good time to talk about these water stations. Considering the heat, there was not enough water stations. They probably couldn’t have predicted this, but it is what it is and people were dropping like flies out there. Not cool. These water bottles, however, were probably the best water bottles I could imagine. The thing is, I failed to comprehend how to drink from it the first time. It was sorta like when you’d bite the upside down bit of a panda pop to get a hole and then suck out of it. My first bite did nothing. Nor did my second. The third… BOOM! The bottle exploded in my face. No water for Alex at Mile 3, then.
Safe to say, I had the technique nailed at Mile 6.
Between these miles I was listening to my splits, they were fairly steady: 6:30, 6:22, 6:33, 6:41, 6:44. Crucially, they were all under the 6:49 I needed to stay under 1h30. There was no point where I could ‘settle’ though, since I didn’t know my first mile time I was just running as fast as the heat would allow.
I’m pretty sure Mile 9 was the beginning of the Miles Without Shade (get ready for it’s sequel: Mile 10 and the Mischievous Mile Markers). Fairly certain I’ve banged on about it every paragraph but it really was that hot. So the disappearance of shade hurt. Alot.
But then as I realised I was coming into the Olympic Park I realised that CheerDem was here. I couldn’t see them. But oh god I could hear them. Butterflies in my stomach kind of situation yet these are people I see week in week out. Coming over the hill to see the signs and familiar faces and Charlie towering over everyone with that megaphone lifted me so much.
Then I remembered something Charlie said a while back “don’t see CheerDem, get all hype and zap all your energy for the rest of the race”. That happened. Hard. But then something amazing happened.
I saw my housemates somewhere around Mile 10. I guess they remembered my “mile 10 at 10!” comment I threw out the night before. The lift that gave me as I ran past them was incredible. Even got a tad emotional. That second lift was useful as this part of the course had some… mischievous (read: wrong) mile markers. Mile 10 appeared to be super short, the 11th extra long and in all honesty I don’t remember the 12th. At that point I was running through quite a bit of pain, my legs were basically telling me to stop. The thing is, a predisposition towards running through pain is pretty much a prerequisite feeling for me when it comes to this particular sport. I mean, I made it through Flatline 10 which is 10 repetitions of pain, surely I can keep running the same pace until the end of this race?
So that’s how it happened. Soaking up the rest of the cheers, I turned a corner and could finally see the Mile 13 sign, and just further on I could see the stop-clock/finish line. That was all I needed to push through, put my arms out and aeroplaned under the finish line. To this.
1:28:11, beating my PB by around 30 minutes. Couldn’t have done it without the familial motivation of RunDemCrew and the incredible support of CheerDem (and my housemates!) on the day. Oh, and EnergyLabs too — Flatline definitely helped me mentally for this.
Between pouring the contents of the post race goody bag into my mouth, finding my housemates and enjoying some #crewlove waiting for people to finish in the race village… albeit for a moment before we had to go… that was a pretty damn good way to end a race.
One thing: the post race massage scene is no joke. Get on it.
[x] Repeat
The thing is, after this race we needed to get to St. Pauls for the City of London #CityMile. Honestly, after 13.1 miles of running… more running wasn’t my first thought but I knew I’d feel this way when I signed up. Knowing this I took my time in the race village, enjoying the vibes and spreading congratulations. But then a few people piped up that they were heading down to St. Pauls. Why not? We meandered down towards Hackney Central, jumped in Ebella’s car and then sped (well tried) to central London. We underestimated just how hard it would be to park around there, and en route realised that we couldn’t see any runners, only people with medals.
At no point did this deter us or did anyone say we should kill this idea. We just wanted to run.
I’m pretty sure I saw the organisers roll up the start line but even this didn’t deter us. So when we finally jumped out the car, found the finish line and spoke to the organisers they ended up giving us a goodie bag, but said we couldn’t run the race since well… it had ended.
Thing is. We could run the mile. Unofficially, yes — but we spend our Tuesday evenings running around the busy streets of East London. Central won’t be too much different. Probably with extra tourists. So we all looked at each other, started our running apps and ran. This was probably the slowest mile I’ve ever ran, in searing heat and holding my bag as tightly to my back as possible but we still did it. Our time’s won’t be official but that medal was definitely earned. No hallucinations this time, either.
Next stop? Copenhagen Half Marathon (& a sub 1:25…). Ciao.
