Stitched

I left Caragh Lake early on Sunday morning on my way to Glengarriff. Yesterday's weather had been absolutely atrocious with plenty of wind and rain, and I was relieved to find much better conditions on race day. I turned on the car radio, and they forecast a nice sunny day with temperatures between 16 and 21 degrees. Hang on. That's 10 degrees warmer than I'm used to! Maybe not quite ideal either, then.

I got to the start in plenty of time, and did some warm-up, but probably not quite as much as I usually like. I lined up pretty much at the front, where I met Grellan, who didn't think he would be able to run faster than 1:30, due to knee troubles. We set off almost on time. My planned pace for the start was about 6:30. Last year Niamh stood at the side of the road and took a video, about a minute into the race, and I was in about 60th position (I finished 26th). At the same point today I scanned ahead, and there were barely 20 runners in front of me. A quick look at my GPS gave my pace as 5:50. Good Grief! I felt good, but a half marathon is long enough to suffer for quite some time if you race like an idiot on the first mile, and I slowed down a little bit. A fair amount of runners went past me, which I tried to ignore as much as I could. The first mile went by in 6:27, which is pretty much on pace. I had set my Garmin to beep every time my heart rate went under 173 or over 178, which was an experiment. Unfortunately it takes a bit for your HR to build up, and for the first 2 miles the infernal device kept beeping at me (6:33 for mile 2). The jostling for position was still going on, and on mile 3 I got chicked. And again. And again. And bloody yet again. Last year, the third female finished in about 1:31, and with 200 Euros on offer for third place I guess a lot of decent runners thought they had a chance to take home a prize; and I had just ended up in the middle of the early battle. I wondered if I should try and stay with that pack of 4 females (with 2 or 3 males), but decided to run my own race. Shortly before mile 3 (6:37) the course comes back to the start line, but from the other direction, and the rest of the race follows the main road to Bantry.

The first taste of that road is a massive hill. I don't know why race directors in County Cork seem to think that crossing the Alps makes a good half marathon, but I've yet to run a flat one. In Bantry they're even lying about it on their web site, claiming that the climb lasts for one mile, when it's almost two. Ok, the steepest part just lasts for one mile (which took 7:44), but then you climb for another mile (6:59) until you reach the highest point of the course, almost 300 feet higher than the start line! At the foot of that climb I had been about 15 steps behind the aforementioned pack, by now the distance had about doubled, but I'm good at running downhill. If my memory serves me right then I had not been overtaken since mile 3.5, and, as it turned out, nobody would go past me for the entire rest of the race, and now it was my turn to hunt down the road kill. By now it was pretty clear that I would be able to match last year's time, but if I would be able to beat my PR wasn't clear yet.

What goes up must come down; the next 3 miles were all downhill, and flew by in 6:33, 6:21 and 6:09, and I must have overtaken at least 10 runners on that stretch, all of them male. The pack in front of me was still holding together, and I could see a fascinating race develop, and had a vantage viewpoint. At one point one of the ladies dropped behind a bit, but she managed to claw back the deficit and rejoined her competitors. I had my own troubles, my left calf muscle had gotten tighter and tighter, and by now it was distinctly uncomfortable. I could live with that but I hoped it would not cramp, that would well and truly end my race. At that stage my HRM started beeping again because my HR kept going under 173 (though it hardly ever dropped beneath 172). The incessant beeping really started to get on my nerves, and I was tempted to chuck the bloody thing into the sea, but that would have been a waste of 200 Euros that I don't really have. I tried to increase the effort, but while the heart might have said that I wasn't redlining yet, the legs begged to differ.

Mile 9 brought the next hill, small but significant enough to give me a side stitch both last year and the year before. This year I managed to go through without, in 6:29. I did remember from the 2 previous years that the rest of the course was rather undulating, there is not a single flat meter in the road, and I thought I was prepared for it. But I had actually forgotten just how long that hill to mile 11 really is (I think I said the same last year). The road just keeps going left and right, and up and up, and my pace slowed, 6:40 for mile 10 and 7:03 for mile 11. One woman of the pack in front of me fell behind, and I went past, and then they obviously started fighting tooth and nail for their places, because they increased the pace (or at least the effort, over those hills). I tried not to let the distance grow, but then the dreaded Bantry side stitch curse hit me. In all the races I have ever done, I've had stitch exactly 3 times: in Bantry 2006, Bantry 2007 and now in Bantry 2008. That gives a stitch hit rate of 100% for Bantry races and one of 0% for all other races combined. I had to slow down a little bit and breathe deeply, and after half a minute or so it disappeared, but by then the group in front of me had doubled the distance. I could see almost 10 runners ahead of me, but at that stage I doubted I would be able to reel in any of them. Despite the stitch, mile 12 wasn't too bad at 6:45, but one additional problem had become apparent at each mile marker; my Garmin showed shorter miles than were marked, and by then it took about 20 seconds between the mile-alarm coming from my watch to the actual passing of the road mile marker. This meant that while the Garmin told me I was on my way to a personal best, the official mile markers disagreed, and it's the official ones that count in the end. There is yet another blasted hill on the last mile, just to make sure you're working hard, and I really put the hammer down on that one. I went deep into the anaerobic zone, the HR alarm started beeping incessantly again, this time because I was running well above my limit, and I pushed and pushed and pushed. To my surprise the distance to the leaders ahead of me melted quickly, and I managed to overtake 4 or 5 runners, including another one of the female prize hunters, and then the finish line appeared behind the final bend. As soon as I saw the timer I knew that I would miss my PR by a matter of seconds. I ran my heart out; mile 13 took 6:26 and the pace on the last bit was 5:35, which I really didn't know I was capable of, and then I crossed the line in about 1:27:57, which meant that after 90 minutes of intense punishment I had managed to miss out on a personal best by 5 lousy seconds.

The day before I had stated that I would be happy with anything under 1:30, but for the first 30 seconds after crossing the line that didn't apply and I muttered a few unprintable choice words, but eventually calmed down and acknowledged to myself that I had run a good race, just 4 weeks after completely destroying my quads over the gruelling Connemara course. The day had one more surprise in for me, they have a hall for massage, and I was the first athlete in there! I must have run pretty well after all, because it started to fill up quickly while I had my aching legs massaged by a nice lady – hey, who's complaining.

The distance according to my Garmin was 13.22 miles, but the official one was the standard half marathon distance of 13.1, and I really do not want to question the accuracy of the course. The average pace according to the Garmin was 6:39, but the “corrected” one is 6:43. My average heart rate was 174, pretty much what it should be. I bumped into Grellan afterwards, and he had even more reason than me to be annoyed, he missed 1:30 by 2 seconds. He was nice enough to go out of his way and gave me a much appreciated lift back to Glengarriff, but our little race series has been equalised. Ewen take note. Cork will be the decider 29 days from today.

4 May

14 miles, incl:
Bantry Bay Half Marathon, 1:27:57