Sheffield Half Marathon

[Seasider71]

Where: Sheffield (Don Valley Stadium)
When: 08th May 2011
Organiser: SIG & Up and Running
Course details: Road Race
Distance(s): 13.1 Miles
Marshalling: Marshalled
Facilities: Water Stations every 2 miles, loads of toilets, showers, changing rooms, bag storage
Technical: Slightly Hilly
Freebies: Medal, T-shirt, Bag, Health Bar

My Race:
Arrived at 0745, had to park about 5 mins walk from the Stadium, but parking was available closer if required, got to the venue early to familiarise myself with the set-up, I was more than impressed, at this time there were loads of marshalls helping with directions and questions, plenty of toilets available at this time, althought the queues did start to build closer to the start of the race, but they were proper toilets and not portaloos (this is a 30000ish seaterh stadium after all). Plenty of people started filling up the grandstand, and the announcers started their work from 0800, at the same time the running track was opened up for all those nutters that wanted to do a warm up.

0900 - The mascot dash, a fun 100m sprint with a Pig winning closely followed by an Owl.

0915 - Timing bays were staked out by marshalls in 30min increments (sub 1.5hr, sub 2hr etc...) all was extremely well organised with plenty of room to get all 5500 competitors assembled and not packed in.

0931 - The race starts - I was in the Sub 2 hr group, as I had arranged to pace some work collegues to get them round in under 2hrs, it took just over a minute to get across the line and fire up the Garmin. As expected the pace was slightly slow getting out of the stadium and out on to open roads, I had decided that an average pace of around 5.30 min per Km or better would get them round in the time, the race itself was quite uneventful, closed roads well marshalled, a couple of dubious points in the route (running through a roundabout underpass twice and also an underground car park), got the guys to 11km ahead of schedule, I said that I would up the pace a litte at this point and that they should give it their best effort in from this point, I upped the pace a bit too much and lost sight of the guys, checked my current pace and I was running sub 5mins, so decided to pull it back a little as I was treating this as a training run for The Outlaw and wasn't looking for a PB, dropped it back to around 5.20mins and just sat at this pace for the remainder of the run, until the obligatory sprint finish in the Stadium.

The Sun came out when we started running and it felt hot, but there were plenty of water stations available to throw some water over my head (I carried my own drinks in my race belt).

I finished in 1hr 52mins, the other guys finished in 1hr 54, 1hr 57 and 2hrs 2mins so good results all round.

A really well organised event, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a Half Marathon in this area in the future.

[jonathon.e]

Well done Gav,and well done to your colleagues as well.

[pristila]

How long should I start training before walking a full marathon? I'm preparing to walk a full marathon with Canadian Diabetes Association in December. For how long should I prepare?