Ealing Half Marathon Race Report

I signed up to run the Ealing Half Marathon about a month after finishing my last full marathon – a delightfully flat course in Manchester. One of the very first things that came up in conversations about the Ealing Half was: hills. As someone who has never really liked running up hills, this was not reassuring. So in the last few months, I have made a point of attending as much hill training as possible, as well as sticking semi-successfully to a training plan.

And the result? Well, either the training has seriously paid off, or someone was overselling the hills!

The Ealing Half Marathon took place last Sunday, and I can only praise it. From the course itself, to the organisation, to the support from the crowds, it was brilliant. Not to mention that it was close enough to home that I not only got to sleep in my own bed, I also didn’t have to get up any earlier than on a normal work day – always a benefit!

We headed off under a slight covering of cloud just after 9am, and spent the next few hours visiting Ealing as the sun gradually burnt them away. Spurred on by my brother, I had pushed myself as close to the start line as I felt I could – a few feet behind the 1:35 pacers, with the purple 1:30 flags in sight. Working backwards from my last marathon time and trying to factor in my training, I felt that 1:35 was a realistic goal, with 1:30 an ideal.

As usually happens in races of any size, it took a little while – nearly a minute in fact – to cross the line. That done, the pace started to pick up, and I let the crowd around me carry me forwards. In my experience, this means that I end up going faster than I initially plan. Certainly, the quick glance at my watch told me that I was moving at sub-7 minute miles, which made me a little nervous. But the pace felt comfortable and sustainable, and I decided to follow my usual race plan and race by effort rather than numbers: if it felt like I could hold it, I would.

By the second mile marker, I’d caught up with the 1:30 pace group, just in time to hit the first significant hill. And don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a hill. It just wasn’t as terrifyingly steep as I’d been anticipating (which is almost certainly down to doing some hill training in Richmond park – the hills there are a lot more daunting!). It helped being with the pace group at that point, because they helped drag us up the hill at a nice steady pace.

Then we hit the downhill and something happened that I certainly hadn’t expected. I sped up and started pulling away. The speeding-up-on-the-downhill part wasn’t too surprising, as I’ve always liked running down. But pulling away from the pace group was. And it made me nervous. I seriously considered reeling back the pace and staying with them, but I still felt so comfortable that doing so would have seemed like a cop out. After all, this was a race and the idea was to run as fast as possible, right?

And the rest of the race went much the same. I was ahead of where I expected to be, and felt like I could hold the pace I was at, for most of the race. I started to feel it more in the last two miles, and that’s when I had to buckle down to hold the pace, and try to focus on my surroundings rather than how tired I was. One advantage of running close to home is that there were plenty of member of my running club out to support us – and the cheers made a big difference in the last painful minutes!

End result: a time of 1:28:32, which is significantly faster than I’d ever hoped. It’s a new PB (though as I’ve only every run the distance as part of a full marathon before, that’s hardly surprising), and it sets the benchmark for next time. Because yes, despite the hills, I’m pretty sure I’ll be back next year, as long as I can fit it in!