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!

10km is an interesting distance to run. Or perhaps a better way to describe it is as a particular form of torture. It’s not a short race like a 5k, where you can push yourself as hard as possible, knowing that there are only 20-odd minutes of pain to get through. And it’s not a long race, like a half or full marathon, where the focus is on pacing and strategy (as much as there is every strategy in running). No, a 10k is at the intersection of the two. Not long enough to settle, not short enough to sprint… what fun!

And it’s not as if I’ve never run 10k before. I often do - as a training run. I’ve used the distance for tempo or threshold runs, or as an easy recovery run. But today, for the first time ever, I’ve run a 10k race. And I still can’t quite decide how I feel about the distance, or if I want to go back…

The 10k race in question was a fairly low key one: The Fuller’s London Pride 10K for Cancer Research UK. The course follows a very familiar loop for me, over ground that I often use when training, which was both a blessing and a curse during the run itself (nothing worse than passing a landmark and knowing exactly how far there is left to go before you can stop running!). It was mostly flat, except for the two bridges we had to cross. And I ran it a lot faster than I was expecting to.

With Manchester marathon now just over two months ago, and having taken roughly a month to recover, I’d only devoted five weeks to properly training. And that, plus the low key nature of the race, and the fact that it was 10k instead of 42k, meant that the whole thing felt a little odd, somehow. More like a parkrun than a race. Which is probably not the worst way to approach my first attempt to run a fast time over that distance. On the morning itself I felt relatively well prepared – I’d slept alright, I’d eaten breakfast, I’d had a decent warm up jog to the start  - but I struggled to get the adrenaline up the way I do before a longer race. I was nervous, but only the way I am before a parkrun, because I know I’m going to run as fast as I can and that it’ll probably hurt.

After a little faffing at the start line (mainly to do with waiting for marshals to be in place) we were called to the start. My mum and brother were also racing, and, urged forwards by my dad, we were more or less at the front of the field when the order to start was finally given (a 3-2-1 count down, with no order to go and a slightly fumbled attempt to start the clock…). And then I found myself somewhere I’m not used to being: near the very front.

Whilst I know I’m relatively speedy for my age, I’m by no means fast enough to be at the front of most races. So when we set off, and I found that initially there were only two people ahead of me, I was convinced that I’d made a huge mistake with my pacing and was going to blow up spectacularly a short distance in. Glancing at my watch, I confirmed that I was running at a faster pace than intended – I’d been aiming for 7:13 minute miles, which would give me a sub-45 minute finish. I ran the first mile of the race in 6:45 – but it didn’t feel too fast. And, because I’m me, I decided to stick with it and see what happened.

What did happen? Well, the runners ahead of me pulled gradually further and further ahead (one, my brother, managed to finish a ridiculous four minutes ahead of anyone else!). I lost a couple of places on the overall ranking by the 5km mark, but then nothing. One other runner sat on my heels for a while in the last 2km, but I managed to pull away again. And I finished in a ridiculous 5^th place overall. And 2^nd woman. And in 41 minutes and 29 seconds. A time of which I am inordinately proud.

So with that result…I’m left with a quandary. I didn’t particularly enjoy the distance as a race. It hurt, a lot, the whole way round. I didn’t hugely enjoy the race itself, partly at least because I didn’t enjoy running on my own so much. I know that sounds silly, almost, but I think it made the whole thing a lot harder and a lot more painful. I love parkrun because I’m running in a crowd, and that pulls me a long. This felt like trying to do a long training run at race pace without much of the race atmosphere. On the other hand, I was happy with my time, and I feel like, in the right circumstances, I can go faster. And it was a challenge – and I do love a challenge. The question then: do I sign up for another 10k?

It’s not a decision I’m going to make yet. I’m sure, at some point, I’ll run another 10k race. Whether it’ll be this year – who knows. The next even on my calendar is the Ealing Half Marathon, which is 14 weeks away. I know I could fit in a 10k race as part of my training, if I decide to. Equally, I could wait and try and race one afterwards. We’ll see. If the right one comes along...

Oh, and just to make it clear - I'm aware that a local 10k is never going to be organised like a bit city marathon. And the organisers of the Fuller's Pride 10k did a great job. The atmosphere was great and really friendly. It felt like a local race, with people happy to chat to one another and cheer each other on, and great support on the ground. It's easy to see my parents convincing me to sign up again next year. And hey, it's always nice to pretend I'm winning material!