Liverpool Half Marathon

Sometimes, just sometimes, being bad at mental arithmetic can be a good thing.

I was approaching the board bearing the number ‘11’ in large enough font for even the severely myopic, and I glanced down at my watch – 1:58, or something like that, as my eyes were a tad blurry from the salty beads running down my forehead. At the time, I thought I needed to go sub ten-minute miles for the final two and a bit miles to get under the 2:20 that I wanted to complete my half marathon in. 

I’m currently booked for three half marathons this year and this Liverpool Half is the first of them. The plan is to shave off ten minutes each time!! That is a big, big ask in such a small time, and they will get harder, the faster I get. So I was determined to bag this first, and essentially easiest one at the very least. 

My training, as I’ve roughly laid out over the past few weeks, has gone okay. For most of the weeks I’ve managed two strength workouts, and I’ve had at least one lung-busting speed effort, which has been either intervals or a tempo runs, or occasionally both. I haven’t been as consistent on the long runs as I would have liked, and the hill repeats have been mainly incidental. However, here I was, following a very familiar route along some of Liverpool’s roads, parks and recreational areas, hoping to see a positive outcome from that accumulated effort.

The morning had been very drizzly. It was needed, after weeks of clear skies but I hoped that it would clear in time for the race. I got on the train at Hamilton Square and met up with a few of the Pensby crew. It was a packed train, virtually full of runners, and it felt nice to be part of this mass of people, all descending on one location, for one collective reason. A little bit like going to a football match, except that you’re all congregating on the pitch and putting a shift in.

I saw Mark, and Helen, and Cath, and Kate, and Nick (not technically a Pensby but as Kate’s fella, he’s allowed in). The drizzle had just about abated as we came out of James Street station and wondered down to the waterfront. The skies were still cloudy, but as running weather goes, it was shaping up to be perfect – cool and dry, and very little wind. 

Thousands of people were milling in front of the Three Graces, the iconic buildings that define Liverpool’s skyline, taking selfies, queuing for the portaloos (separated into men’s and women’s blocks, an idea that seemed to work well), and chucking their extraneous belongings onto the baggage buses. It was impossible to find anybody, unless you’d pre-arranged a meeting point – for example, at the statue of the Beatles, or the bloke on the horse (aka Edward VII). I didn’t think to suggest such obvious rendezvous points, so missed out catching up with John or Ruth, or most of the other Pensby crew.

There were around twelve thousand people standing on the start line when nine o’clock came around. Shifting that many people through the START gantry takes an awfully long time. I thought that Cath and I were standing in between the 2:10 and 2:20 pacers, but when we got close to starting, twenty minutes later, the 2:20 paddles had somehow swooped well ahead of us. So much for running with pacers.

Cath started jogging, well ahead of the official start line, and I let her to conserve my energy. I haven’t felt this amount, of nerves before a race in a while. Maybe I shouldn’t have told anybody that I was aiming to hit 2:20, so if I failed, I could fail quietly. To get just below 2:20 if I were to run exactly 13.1 miles, I needed to run an average of 10:40 minutes per mile. But of course, you never run exactly 13.1, it’s invariably several feet further. Plus, the terrain wasn’t pancake flat to allow you to be metronomic.

The biggest hill was Parliament Street. Everybody knew about that one, but many people were surprised at the undulations on Ullet Road and in and around Sefton Park. I wasn’t, having done this race a few times before, and having lived near Sefton Park for a number of years before moving across the water to the ‘dark’ side. I was pleased with the fact that, although I was aware of these inclines, they weren’t wiping me out. I had tried to be conservative at the beginning, yet in the vicinity of that 10:40 pace, and I think I judged it fairly well, because apart from an energy dip at around mile eight, I felt fairly comfortable. 

This was a bit of a surprise, given how poorly my long runs, in training, had appeared to go, but I had put the miles in, albeit at a snail’s pace, and cumulatively that had helped. I met a couple more Pensbys en route, but I didn’t see Cath again until after the end. And I had no sight of any of the pacers, until near the final mile.

I had been speaking to Stella, along the nearly four-mile stretch of the waterfront, as we were navigating the annoying cobblestones that were liberally sprinkled about. Coastal concrete flags are bad enough, but stone cobbles are worse to run on, for their sheer lack of give. It can be painful. As we chatted, I realised that I needed to start speeding up. It was a bit of a revelation that at about nine-and-a-bit miles in I could find another gear. Normally, by this point I’m in a steady decline, but not today. Then, when I had my scare around the two-hour mark, I put the burners on even higher. 

How did that even happen?

It wasn’t all plain sailing. I had a niggle down my right leg from my glute to my knee for most of the second half of the race. It didn’t get worse, but it never quite went away, so it required some concentration to try and keep my gait even. But, overall, I was very pleased with my efforts today. I was so focused that I only stopped to take one photo, had two points where I walked at the water stations, and spoke to about three people, one of whom was Becks, a well known local runner, who I recognised from the mousy whiskers she draws on her face. It was lovely to catch up with her. 

I only managed to catch up with Cath on the baggage bus. We figured out later that she was just a few seconds ahead of me, even though I didn’t spot her once on the course. I told her I had spat my dummy out and had refused to take a finishers tee shirt because the only sizes they had left were large and super large. That was pretty rubbish, although I wish I had taken one after all, as I was starting to get cold. One thing about good running weather is that it isn’t great to stand around in.

My time in the end? 2:17:41. I was especially pleased because this time, I speeded up, generally, as the race went on, instead of the other way around. I had caught up with the 2:20 pacing people in the final mile of the race so I knew I’’d get over the line, and I did manage to go sub-ten in my final two miles. The first Half Marathon of the year has been ticked off successfully. The second, I’m not as sure about, especially as I’m away for three longish periods between now and then. And needing an average pace of 9:55 minutes per mile seems a much bigger mountain to climb.

But, for a little while, I can forget about it, and bask in the success of today.