Alloa Half Marathon

No photos from today so I've had to be a bit creative.
It was a nice sunny day for the first day of spring. 13 miles seemed an awfully long way to run on a road for a race. There was a queue to get to Alloa in the car and then a long queue for the toilet and then a queue to leave the place as well. I had 1 1/2 Double Deckers as pre-race preparation and had the other half when I finished.

The course seems to be a lot hillier than it used to be back in 2011 when I could run 1.39! Today I ran 1.52 by my watch which was decidedly better than last year at Haddington going for a poop in a field and coming storming in sans pants in 2hrs 02mins.

Peter declared his time disgraceful and complained bitterly on the way home in the van. If he'd only run a minute or so quicker he'd have probably been happy. What the hell? Us humans are crazy. We emerge, improbably, from and into an infinite universe, made from space dust and glueons and who knows what else, and then get ourselves down in the mouth about taking a handful of seconds too long in a road race on a spring day in Alloa.

I've decided I'm quite pleased with running that far at sub 8.30 pace.

Time for something else. Making that photo has taken the stuffing out of me.

Alloa half marathon

Alloa half today. Done this a few times too many although the course has altered a bit. Neither of us was particularly hopeful of a good performance although I was a bit more upbeat than P on the way out in the van. He must have been depressed because he didn't even protest about the music on the way out which was coming out of my i-pod and filling the air with some 80s sounds. (Not just the 80s either but back to the 70s for the "Heeds man" (thats the Talking Heads to you) and maybe back as far as the 60s for the Velvet Underground.)

We overtook the club bus at Barnton and after swapping places a few times on the A8 we overtook decisively on the M9 and let them eat our dust. Haha!
Into Alloa in plenty of time and the Porty bus was not far behind. I expected its inhabitants to spill out chanting and singing, the pre-journey hype having reached such a pitch, but actually people looked a bit quiet and tired and nervous.

Alloa is getting a bit big and quite a bit of queueing followed. Very well organised though. It all went off like clockwork.

I wanted a proper warm up so had several guest warm-up partners who joined me for a while and then left me as I jogged round the building and round the carpark at the back. Karen Munro and I had to try not to stare as some man in black was warming up by jiggling his buttocks with his back to us. Running up the hill with Kathleen Bolt and Peter I found a tenner wet with morning dew. (I hope it was morning dew.) Anyway its spent now if you're looking for it. Used it to buy soup and rolls when we got home.

The race, I'm avoiding the race! Oh the race went fine.  If I'm 100% truthful I'd have to say its good training but mentally its too hard. I've run too many half marathons! I'd rather be running off road and I'd rather not know the course. Having said that I was quite pleased with approx 1.39.20. (I never heard the start) - gun-time. Its not that far (about a minute) off a pb. time and I've not been doing training that would automatically lend itself to half marathon running. The fast girls must have got stuck further back at the start and so I was sorry to see them go past at about 2 miles. Mel was certainly happy at the end. I didn't see Amanda or Jacqui to know how they got on. Emily did a very good 1.36 but she was disappointed it wasn't a pb. Bloody road racing does that to you. You can run a stormer and then be disappointed about your time.
I'd hoped to beat the 2 psychiatrists from my work who I knew were also running - Pete Le Fevre and Norman Nuttall but they've been doing something right and took a couple of minutes off me. A blow to nurses everywhere but I'll get over it.

There was a massive, massive Porty turn out which made the whole day tremendously friendly and good fun.

I have tomorrow off so have to weigh up whether its better to crank out another long run or to just rest up and wait for next weekend to go long again...