![\"cardiff-half-marathon-773416937\"](\"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/cardiff-half-marathon-773416937.gif\" "\\"cardiff-half-marathon-773416937\\"")
Since tri season finished I’ve been pretty focused on the running.\u00a0 Going out 3 times a week for distances of between 8 and 16K and managing to steadily improve my average speed.<\/p>\nSince tri season finished I’ve been pretty focused on the running.\u00a0 Going out 3 times a week for distances of between 8 and 16K and managing to steadily improve my average speed.<\/p>\n
I agreed to enter the Marathon back after Kathryn and Ian did Bath but I didn’t initially sign up as I wanted to be sure my ankle could cope with it.\u00a0 My target time was initially 2h15 but then I dropped that to 2h05, 2h, 1h55 and then in the week or so before decided that provided I didn’t blow up in the extra distance 1h50 was achievable.<\/p>\n
To be honest from training it was suggesting that even 1h45 might be possible but would be a push and require me to maintain 5 minute kilometers for the entire duration of the race.\u00a0 Chris was more confident in my ability to do it than I was but then at the same time I said he should be aiming between 1h50 and 1h55 whereas he was aiming for 2h.<\/p>\n
We got their nice and early thanks to K getting us a great space nearby and moved ourselves up the field to start with people with similar targets.\u00a0 There were 9000 runners in total all lined up by the City Hall.\u00a0 The race started and I put in my usual couple of quicker KMs which would be needed if I was to stay anywhere near a 5minute average.\u00a0 6K in and I was a minute and a half up on a 1h45 schedule and for much of the trip along the barrage had the 1h40 pacemaker in sight.<\/p>\n
I felt strong on the slopes there were, often taking several people as soon as we hit any sort of incline – the advantages of training round here!\u00a0 At around the 8 mile mark I started to feel a pain in my knee which was to get worse as the race went on but being still ahead of schedule I kept going and going and trying to block it out.\u00a0 K was buzzing around town to try to see us as often as she could (and she did it much better than I did in Bath) and that always helped.\u00a0 What didn’t help was being run down by Batman, Robin and a giant Champagne Bottle!<\/p>\n
Coming into the last kilometre and a bit I knew 1h45 was on but was going to be tight so I digged in and upped the pace reasoning that I could worry about the pain soon enough, as it was as I approached the finishing straight I realised that my Garmin had under measured so when I thought I had another 150m to go I actually didn’t – final time 1h44:09.<\/p>\n
Must admit to being over the moon with that time as I did think 1h45 was a little optimistic – Chris also came in not far behind pretty much bang on 1h48.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew he could do 1h50 if he pushed it but to beat that by another 2 minutes is good going – I’ll have to watch myself when he sorts out his chesty-coughy-cold-phlegmy-mystery illness.<\/p>\n
A great event, course was really good, and my shiny new freebie oakley’s got their racing debut!\u00a0 Do I want to do another – not just yet.\u00a0 It’s taken 3 days for my knee to settle down again – seems it was some sort of inflamed ligament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since tri season finished I’ve been pretty focused on the running.\u00a0 Going out 3 times a week for distances of between 8 and 16K and managing to steadily improve my average speed. I agreed to enter the Marathon back after Kathryn and Ian did Bath but I didn’t initially sign up as I wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dave","category-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidandkathryn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}