Nottingham Holme Half Marathon

Bit of a late race report, but sadly life gets in the way sometimes, it’s been a tiring week of training and getting back into the rhythm of things.

The morning of the race came, and I felt pretty calm about things, it was a 10am start so not to early, I laid out my kit the night before like usual, so woke, kit on and headed down to breakfast which was my usual race day breakfast, porridge, coffee and a banana. I headed out about 8ish as it was about an hour’s drive and I had to drop my eldest boy to my parents on the way. Arrived at the race Hq car park, wasn’t too busy, headed straight for the loo’s 😆 and went to collect my number, meet a couple of club members there to Steve and Becky which was lovely catching up with them. I did my warm up with Steve as we checked out the course and weather conditions were great. The course was 4.5 loops of a lake, there was a 10k and 5k on the day to, the Half was setting off first.

One last look at my phone and stripped my warm up gear off, I notice my girlfriend sent me a good luck video message which was amazing 🥲 to hear xx

10 o clock comes we’ve lined up on the start, I was on the 2nd row. Gun goes off and off we go, the field soon thins and there’s a guy who quickly takes the lead and has set out with intent, within the first loop and very early on I quickly find myself in a group of 4 guys behind the leader, Steve being one of them, we was settling into a pace, that was a little quicker than I wanted but I went with it, as today I wanted to really test myself over the half distance.

The pace was sub 80 mins, as we got into the 2nd mile me and another guy took the pace over from Steve and this other runner, we held that over the next mile, Steve decided to push on and the group broke, and another guy dropped off the back of the group, which left me in 4th place tailing another guy who was in the group. I settled into a new pace of around 6:15 -6:20 min miles, and seemed to get a good rhythm going, 2 loops checked off and still feeling strong and still in 4th, the leader couldn’t even see him anymore 😆 but I was still in striking distance for 3rd.

Midway through the 3rd lap I hear fast feet coming from behind!! I thought “ could this be the leader “!! Surly not, ? My pace was still good, but positions 5&6th came past together! Nooo ! Obviously they paced the race better than me and worked there way past me and the next guy ! I couldn’t respond and latch onto them, so just had to think about my own race and getting through the last lap. As the last lap started so did the 10k and 5k races, so the route was now congested! So going around the first bend I was really zigzagging around people sadly but it soon thinned again, now it was just dig in deep and finish strong..

And that is what I did, I held on and came in 6th place, 2nd in age cat (40-45) and a 4 min PB, 1h22, I was so so happy with that result, probably one of the best races I’ve had..