Today I ran my very first half marathon, something I always thought would have been out of my reach. I am super proud of myself, although a little sore in the legs!
In this post I wanted to document my thoughts on what I have learned from this experience in the hope that it helps or inspired others who are thinking of doing something similar in the future. Here goes…
The run
The route I took was nothing planned at all. I set off with a view to running slower and after my usual distance, then after 6 and 8 miles I still felt good and therefore wanted to push on to complete the half marathon.
As you can see I sort of headed off in a perimeter around my home town of Leyland. As I got back round to the end of the loop I had to find some extra distance to make the half marathon.
What have I learnt?
A number of things actually. Lets take a look:
Going slower is the key
We often talk about running at work as there is a few of us who run. One of the things everyone always says is how fast I run. I usually have a per mile time of between 6 minutes 50 second and 7 minutes 20 seconds.
On this run I started off not with the goal of completing a half marathon but with the goal is simply running slower. This seemed to make all the difference as when I got to my normal run distance (4.2 miles) I felt like i had just set off. Therefore, I decide to push on to 10km (6.21 miles) and see how I felt.
At the 10km mark I still felt fine and therefore pushed on some more. It was about the 9 mile mark where I though I have to complete a half marathon now as I am only 3 miles away.
You can do anything you put your mind to
I started running about 2.5 years ago now. At the time I could hardly walk a mile never mind run one. A half marathon felt so far away at that point.
However a few years later with lots of running under my belt I have managed it.
I remember watching the London Marathon a few days earlier and seeing all the amazing people crossing the line. So many different age groups finishing in good times spurred me on to think I can surely do that.
Maybe one day I will complete a marathon, after all I have managed half that now!
What is next?
Well, that is an interesting question! My goal for this year, was to complete a single run over 8.5 miles, something which of course I have now completed.
I think the next stage is for me to actually complete a race and I think a half marathon is something that I could achieve.
Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash
