I had got most of my kit ready the night before, but that was no consolation when my alarm went off at 05.30. I got up and went downstairs and had my usual breakfast of porridge and chia seeds, last minute check of kit and I was set to go.

The journey to Brighton was not too bad, it took around an hour and a half arriving at the park and ride at 8 o’clock, then a quick queue for the bus and a 10 minute ride to the start.

I have to say that this was the first big event I have been to, I believe there was an estimated 10,000 competitors on the day, and by far the largest group of runners I have run with, although the majority of them finished way ahead of me.

 

When I entered this race I had estimated my finish time to be around 2 and a half hours, so I crossed the start line around 10 minutes after the starting gun, which was fine, as there was so many people it was hard to get any sort of pace going, this continued for about the first mile, then the field of runners thinned out slightly and I could get in a steady rhythm. It was now a matter of keeping my head down and just keeping going.

I set my sights on the 2.30 hour pacer, my plan was to ensure I kept in front of them so that I could finish with a fairly comfortable time. At around the 5 mile mark there was a drinks station and a loo, the queue for this was fairly small, around 5 people, so i stopped and made use of it, what i had not accounted for was that the laddies take somewhat longer, and by the time a got in and did the necessaries, it had taken around 15 minutes, and when I got running again my legs had started to seize up and was quite hard to get into a rhythm again ( this was to be repeated again at mile 9, costing me even more time ).

So I continued to run on in the vein hope of making up the lost time, sadly this was not to be, by mile 11 an old knee injury had started play up and all I could then do was take it easy, and just concentrate on not doing any real further injury and to cross the finish line in what ever time it turned out to be.

My official finish time was 2 hours 39 minutes, not a great time, but it will do.

What I have learnt during this race is “Do not use the loos early on”;  overall this was a good race, fairly flat and a good course to get a PB, I will see how a fair next year.