Owls Count

Yesterday I took part in the ‘Down Tow Up Flow’ Thames Towpath Half Marathon 2008 - a run along the Thames tow path from Windsor to Marlow.

During last week I kept checking the weather forecast and it kept point to a hot day. Yep, the forecasters were right - it started hot and just got hotter.

The first half of the race was mainly in shade and I went through the first seven miles on target for 1:45. However, my recent illness and lack of long runs told after that and I slowed. I was particularly slow in the open section in the last four miles, when the heat was really noticeable. From ten miles I walked more than I ran.

My finish time was 2:00:40, which is disappointing. I’ll be back out running again soon and will put this behind me. I can, however, recommend jelly babies for running fuel. Rather good they are - just not the yellow or green ones!

(There are photos and I’ll add them once I have received them.)

WordPress 2.6 has been released. I have upgraded this blog - a rather quick and easy process.

Also, I have moved server recently. Hopefully everything is up and working correctly. If not let me know. The move was fairly painless - just a little while spent working out where all the setting were kept.

This past weekend I went to the inaugural North Hampshire Time Trial - a 5k race around the Basingstoke War Memorial Park. I travelled down on the morning by train and walked across to the park. It would have made more sense to use the journey to the park as a warm up, but I was not particularly organised on Saturday morning.

Lots of people started fairly fast - myself included. I ran the first lap, of just over 2k, in 8:30 and the second in 9:13. Far too unbalanced. I had a child in front of me for quite a while and seemed unable to get any closer to him. Finally, coming round the last stretch I realised that some people were closing in on me and speed up.

My time was 20:50, which is 2 seconds slower than at Bramhall. I do have hope, though, that I may be able to manage a much quicker time - if I can manage to maintain the pace of the first lap round the second. Also, I finished 11th for the third race in a row!

Photos: Lap 1 - Lap 2 - Finish.

Having finished racing I then spent the rest of the weekend moving house. Slowly I am getting myself organised in the new place, but we do seem to still have lots of boxes piled up.