A personal story of how to run a Half Marathon
Following her experiences, trials and tribulations of running the
Blackpool Half Marathon in near blistering conditions, our race
correspondent Alison Camwell now gives some personal advice and training
routes for virgins just starting out.
Alison writes :-
Those of you that have had the
pleasure of running with me over the past 18 months may have noticed that I
can get a little fixated with the mileage we cover on each run and the time
it took and that, especially on the longer runs, I have to set myself
mini-goals along the route to break the run down into achievable sections.
This works both ways as the crowd I generally run with today are faster than
me, but they rely on me to set the route each Sunday and therefore have to
wait for me every couple of miles so that I can catch up and tell them which
way to go next!
Thanks to Rita and Mary with their pedometers, Dave, Nick and
Phil on the bikes and me being a bit of a saddo and clocking the road
sections in the car, I’ve always kept notes of how long each run is. For
those of you who want to gradually increase your running, you can now use
this information to build up your distances and the length of time you can
run for by combining various runs.
The
following should only be taken as an indication – it’s not an exact science
and is not up to too much scrutiny – and should be updated as we go. If
anyone has other routes they run, then please let Phil know the details and
we can add them to the list.
Route distances are based on out and back from Wombourne
Leisure Centre. Don’t forget that I have knocked 0.2 miles off each leg when
combining a route i.e. you’ll either miss out the Round Oak hill or the path
to the railway to/from Centre on each leg.
Summer running and Sunday running routes (The routes are
planned so that if you feel tired you will pass close to the Leisure Centre
at some point and can cut short your run):
|
Bratch
1.5 miles |
Swindon, Bratch
5.5 miles |
Castlecroft, Centre,
Bratch
10.2 miles
*(2) |
|
Tip
3.0 miles |
Dimmingsdale plus
Mary’s loop
5.7 miles |
Castlecroft, Tip
11.3 miles
*(2) |
|
Awbridge
3.7 miles |
Swindon, Awbridge
7.7 miles |
Dimmingsdale,
Wombourne/road, Swindon
11.5 miles
*(1) |
|
Swindon
4.4 miles |
Castlecroft
8.7 miles *(2)
(figure of 8 route) |
Castlecroft, Swindon
12.7 miles
*(2) |
|
Dimmingsdale
5.2 miles |
Swindon,
Dimmingsdale
9.2 miles |
Dimmingsdale,
Wombourne/road, farm/Hinksford, Swindon 12.8 miles *(1) |
|
|
|
Dimmingsdale,
Wombourne/road, farm/Hinksford, Swindon, Bratch 13.9 miles *(1) |
*(1)
If you want more detail on the exact path of this route please click here
(opens Word doc)
*(2)
If you want more detail on the exact path of this route please click here
(opens Word doc)
A
couple of tips if planning to run a 10K race or more:
·
As you get
nearer to the race date try keeping your training run stops to a minimum of
every 3 miles to mimic water stations.
·
Don't stop for
any longer than 1 minute to take on water - try to keep walking whilst
drinking in any case.
·
If the water’s
in bottles – easy peasy, but if it’s in a cup there’s an art to drinking out
of it and running at the same time – one I’ve not mastered yet!
PS
Don’t ask me about the Winter runs on the roads – I become a sheep and
follow the person in front of me!
