Four Villages Half Marathon 2026

I have never had a blister before. I’ve done one 50K, six marathons and countless half marathons, but I’ve never had an issue with my feet. Even my toenails have stayed on – apart from the time I kicked a log and didn’t like it. But it was my own fault. The rain was falling and I had not performed my usual trick for long runs. Rubbing Vaseline on to my feet before putting my socks on. It reduces the friction between skin and sock and if I’d applied it, the big angry red mark on the sole of my foot would not have appeared.

It’s probably not quite a blister. Today I’m walking around with the feeling that I’ve got a bit of Cellotape stuck to the bottom of my foot. It’s weird but not painful anymore, and it’s flat. And aside from this I’m quite pleased with myself. Who knew that stringing a bunch of long runs together over the weeks leading up to the race would culminate in a course PB?

I did them once a week and I went from seven miles to just over eleven miles for six weeks going up by time (because I needed to get myself motivated in the beginning) then by distance. 

Just go out for an hour and a half at a relaxing pace and listen to a nice podcast (or three). 
In week three it was:
Let’s take it up to two hours, and you can have a bacon butty at the end of it.
Then:
Round it up to ten miles, or eleven and you can have a hot chocolate with all the trimmings.

And during every week:
No pressure. Just let the legs feel gently tired.

I’m assuming other people have conversations with themselves too.

It is hard, sometimes, to work out what is getting tired. Is it the lungs or the legs? In order to build up my stamina, I wanted the legs to be doing all the work. Not get so fatigued that I couldn’t walk for the rest of the day, but enough. All my long runs were between 11:30 minutes per mile and 13+ minute miles. The difference in speed was down to how I felt on the day, as opposed to my heartrate. I could have loads of energy sometimes but be wanting to pull the duvet back over me the next. I felt like that on the final long run before this race, it was awful. ‘Don’t worry’ people said. ‘You’ll be fine on the day.’ That day I could only do around nine miles in two hours. During the race I was two miles faster at the two-hour mark, so the people were right.

Helsby Half is considered to be hilly. I’ve run this race a few times. Sometimes I’ve been fit, and sometimes I haven’t. When I haven’t felt very fit, I do consider the race to be hilly, but this time, it was just undulating. None of the inclines were so steep that I needed to walk, I just used Jeff’s advice of reducing my stride. Jeff, a club member who also runs our Couch to 5K course, tells all his students to keep their rhythm going and to make their steps a bit smaller which is what I did to not tire myself out. Plus, I think those occasional hill repeats in my training might have been paying dividends. 

The only time I walked was during the three water breaks. They were dishing it out in paper cups to reduce the plastic. It was a lot easier to walk and drink from them, and I was happy enough to take a break. I could feel my foot start to feel warm around mile seven, but as there was nothing I could do until I got back, I ignored it. The rain, however, kept on coming, sometimes lightly and sometimes heavily, and my lovely neon pink running shoes were less neon after all the puddles. 

The final couple of miles or so are mainly downhill and although my foot now felt like I was being poked by a hot poker, I tried to make use of the gravity. I caught up with Kev, a club mate in the final mile or so and he kept me pushing all the way to the line which I was relieved to see.

A great improvement on my time two years ago. And I haven’t slipped since September’s Warrington Half. My final time was 2:15:28 which was what I was hoping to get, so despite the fact that I needed to hobble back to the car, I was quite pleased.