u/llama_del_reyy

Injured, sad times. Wave 8, can arrange post or in-person handover in central London once I receive my bib. Selling for £66 which is exactly what I paid.

Starting pen F, selling for face value (£55) plus postage if I post it to you (or collection in central/East London).

Very proud that I was able to run my first half marathon this weekend!

Some of you may have seen my posts - I had a long period of injury and then only 8 weeks to ramp up from basically no running to a half, and I was very worried about getting enough training in without getting injured.

Pleased to report I think I ticked both boxes! (For those interested, I ended up doing 2x strength and 2x runs a week, one a 4k easy run and one a long run starting at 6k and topping out at 15k as my longest run).

I did all of my training and all of the race run/walk with 4 min running and 1 min walking and I think that helped hugely with injury prevention. It also helped with morale during the race because I was able just look to the next walk break, rather than thinking about the miles ahead.

I finished in 3:03 and while I was experiencing brand new pains and aches by the end, I felt strong and was able to speed up at the finish! My overall pace was around a minute per km faster than my long runs, which was gratifying as I still felt like I'd 'raced' despite the run/walk.

It was energising to be in a massive race (20k runners) and the crowd support was beautiful, but I do feel like the slow pokes were forgotten about. The roads were only meant to reopen 3.5 hrs after the last starter (so I was well ahead of that pace), yet there was a sense the event was already ending- one water station, one gel station and one fruit station had already been shut down. The stewards also did nothing about the dozens and dozens of people who decided to bike on the course as we ran it, weaving in and out of runners, which was outrageous. But the crowd support never wavered!

Hi all - I know it's not *advisable*, but I've currently got a healing stye (about 3 days in, no crusting and swelling and pain has gone down) and have a long run later today.

I feel much, much safer running in contacts - my glasses slip around while I run and I have previously fallen when running in glasses. So it's a matter of balancing risk - just how bad is the risk of wearing contacts for 2 hours this evening?

(Skipping the run isn't an option!)