Hello everyone,

I wanted to tell you all about a race I did yesterday in Essex called ‘The Multi Mile Half Marathon’ and before you ask, ‘yes’ it was exactly that, thirteen times around a 1 mile lap that was all off-road and included two climbs per lap!

There were two other distances to choose from, a 10km race and a full Marathon. They all took in the same lap and apart from starting in slightly different positions to ensure  the distance being accurate, and at the end of each lap you ran through a funnel relevant to your distance to ensure laps were counted correctly.

The race was held in the beautiful (but hilly) Weald Park in Brentwood, Essex. It was a lovely day and wasn’t too wet so perfect conditions for running off-road (this might have been different with a couple of days rain thrown into the equation! ha)

It was a good sized event but not a huge event with thousands of runners and this gave the event a very friendly and relaxed feel about it, which I loved and have missed after a season of mass participation triathlons. It really does show you that bigger, more expensive events are not always better and the smaller, regional events are well worth looking at.

I was running with the Mrs (Marsha) and where she is experienced over longer distance events, this was my second Half Marathon ever and my first which was a not so perfect race as many of you might remember from the race report (see: Blog entry “My first Half Marathon, a lesson learnt!“).

Well the race started at 9am and with a field of 50-60 runners in each distance there was a good number of runners that would be venturing around this 1 mile loop for the next few hours.

I started off hard, but not as hard as usual and kept the pace up for the first 3 laps which went by really quick. It helped that after the first lap I started catching the slower runners and this continued for the whole race which was great for morale. I settled down into a great rhythm for laps 4-7 and still felt great but then the brick sessions and hard training week from the previous 7 days kicked in! I had to dig deep through laps 8, 9 and 10 and played numerous mental games with myself, but on crossing the line on lap 10 I was good, my head was good, my legs were still fine and I managed to pick up the pace again to run hard to the finish!

The 13 laps had passed so much quicker than I would have ever have thought and although the two climbs were tough there was enough down hill to recover and on each lap you found a better rhythm and with passing people and the beautiful weather I crossed the line in 1st place in a time of 1 hour 26 minutes and a whole lap ahead of my closet competitor!

Marsha also had a fantastic run finishing 4th women in 1 hour 57 minutes and on very tired legs to run under the hour was a huge result and her quickest Half Marathon time of the year by 5-6 minutes!

I received a hug from my Mum (Number 1 supporter, and lap counter at this particular race) and from my Mrs who I was waiting for at the finish line. I also got a small trophy, a nice t-shirt and a medal so some great goodies for those who like them.

I will be doing this race next year, the date has been provisionally announced as Sunday 24th October 2010. this will also be the end of season ‘RG Active Race Team’ 10km Championships and Half Marathon Championships so pencil it in you lot!

So, for all of you that like a challenge and want something a bit different, then pencil this event in and I will see you next October for the Multi-Mile Race that is well organised and although not the biggest event in your calendar, it will definitely be one the better ones!

Speak to you all again soon, thanks for reading and “Live what you Love”

John