Coatesville was the event of “firsts”

Not only would be the first time James ran a half marathon and it was also the first organised running event for a group of my girlfriends and little did I know but Coatesville would also hold a first for me, but more about that later.

The event was to be held on Sunday with race pack pick up the day prior. The girls and I all went to collect our race packs together so that we could “carb load” then check out the course (which to the uninitiated translates to we ate crap then gawked at the dot com mansion ).

On a side note Kim Dotcom has a giraffe on his lawn .. who the heck wakes up one morning and thinks “Hmmm today I think I will buy a life sized giraffe statue ”

That’s one fit looking bunch huh?

The next morning we had to be at the event venue in Coatesville before stupid oclock which although it is pretty normal for me it was a novelty for the rest of the girls 😉   It was cool but not raining and I guess if you have to run these conditions are what you want.

My goal/s were as follows;

• Beat the other girls back.
• Complete the course in 40 minutes – thats a 5 minute k AND if I couldn’t do that I’d be happy with
• Completing the course in under 48 minutes

As I mentioned earlier I had driven over the course so I knew there were hills – big hills – big long hills but I’m not a bad hill runner, I’m not fast but I don’t stop and I was hoping that I could pick up enough speed on the downhill sections to make up for the time I would lose on the uphill sections.

Did I do it? Yes, No ..

Yes! (Just) but that is faster than a 6 minute per k pace, so I’m not going to complain and if you have really good eyes you will spot I scrapped into top 10 for my age group!

In fact all the girls did better than their expectations and we all walked away with a medal ..

What of James you ask .. he had a goal to run the half in under 100 minutes and he finished with a time of 1:40:41 – he isn’t crying over those few seconds, although the boy sprinted to the finish line so he obviously didn’t leave enough out on the course 😉

He got a medal too – it was about twice the size of mine, but then again I guess he ran twice as far so it’s probably fair enough ..

I thought however that even though he had a bigger medal I *might* have bigger guns ..

Again .. not even close 😉 Ahh well it wasn’t all bad there was the post race picnic to enjoy!

You know what? There are some advantages to be had for this ironman training!  Oh and what “first” happened for me at Coatesville?

I ran a negative split!

First four k’s I completed in 24:16 (the kilometer with the huge hill took 6:43 – thats about a minute more than my next slowest k) the second four k’s I finished in 22:41, not bad, not bad at all.

Till next time