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I Only Did It For The Ice Lolly!

My well deserved ice lolly after a boiling St Albans Half Marathon


I had a busy weekend with my usual 5k Parkrun on Saturday and then the St Albans Half Marathon today. I knew that I needed to save my legs for the race today and so at Parkrun yesterday I donned a Hi-Vis jacket and ran as a 35min pacer. It was the first time I have ever paced a race and so I was pretty nervous that I was going to get it wrong, I must have looked at my phone a hundred times to make sure I was on pace. Unfortunately I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the course always measures slightly over 5k and so I finished at 35:03. Luckily the people who were trying to finish before 35 minutes were in front of me and so still reached their goal. This was a different experience for me but really enjoyable. I talked to a lot of people as I ran around and had lots of people talking about staying with the ‘Pace Lady’! The biggest benefit for me though was given my legs an easy, comfortable run before the half marathon today and making sure I couldn’t get excited and run off too fast. I will be pacing again next Saturday and will make sure I factor in the extra distance and shave off those 3 seconds!

My trendy Hi-Vis!

Today was all about the St Albans Half Marathon and the ice lolly that you received when you crossed the finish line! The weather was perfect as I walked to the start from the car park; cool and breezy. However the clouds quickly parted and the sun shined down brightly on the 3800 competitors who very quickly got extremely hot and sweaty. The first half of the race wasn’t too bad, it was hot and there were a few hills but I was able to run at a decent pace and make the most of the sporadic shaded sections. But shortly after I passed the six mile mark the hills began. Horrendous, steep hills that seemed to go up and up but never come down! At some points I could barely run and did some sort of weird shuffle to keep going telling myself that surely this was the last hill. The last hill did come.....at the 11.5 mile point. By this point my leg muscles were screaming, I was covered in salt from sweat and I smelled worse than the last day of Glastonbury Festival! But I was determined that I was going to keep pushing and used a half mile downhill section to pick up the pace and then continued to push whilst telling myself that I never want to do another half marathon again (I’m doing one on 1st July). But the finish came and I even overtook someone right on the line pretending that I was some sort of Olympic athlete! Ha Ha! Despite the hills and the sun I finished with a PB of 2:02:46. I got my medal, t-shirt and the wonderfully awesome Cola flavoured ice lolly which was the best thing I have ever tasted! That helped a little bit in cooling me down but the running and sun had left me a red faced mess! I then got to enjoy the 1.5 mile walk (uphill) to the car park (they said it was only 10 mins away) and was ecstatic to find that Elaine Paige on Sunday was just about to begin. So I drove home with the windows down belting out show tunes. Perfect!


I only need £235 more to make my goal of £2000. If you can help me reach this total then please visit my fundraising page at:

KM Complete: 202KM
KM To Go: 98KM 

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