Great Birmingham Run 2013

Pre-race selfie!

The penultimate race in my 2013 Challenge Series was the Great Birmingham Run, a half marathon following a route through Birmingham's city centre, through the south of the city, including Cannon Hill Park, Cadbury's, and Edgbaston and then back into Birmingham.

This would have been my last race of the series, if I had not decided to run the New York marathon, and I was torn between really "going for it" and taking it easy, so as to not take any unnecessary risks just a couple of weeks before New York. In the event I took it as a sort of training run, thereby not really performing at my best, but having a great time.

In the first mile

Before this year's race, The Great Brum Run last year was probably my favourite race, and I found it to be an exhilarating and emotional experience. This year, although I did not have the same response as last year, I thoroughly enjoyed this really great run! The weather was again pretty nearly perfect for running, pretty mild but with a bit of sun peeping through and the race itself was really well organised. 

An improvement on last year

The course had changed slightly from last year, with an additional "hilly bit" at about mile 4. This threw me a bit, and did make the course slightly harder, not only because of that hill, but also because the hill at the end came slightly later on in the course as well. However, I think I preferred it this year as it felt that once THE hill was done and out of the way, the finishing line came more quickly!

I had estimated that I'd get a time of 2.00 hours and was pretty surprised to be in the second "white" wave of the race, as I thought I'd be in the green wave, which was the next wave to start. I think I must have just scraped into this wave, as most people around me I think would have been expecting to run 1:50 or quicker. I was definitely surrounded by more "serious" runners than at the start last year, and as a result was overtaken by a good lot of runners over the first few miles! As I said, I was torn between racing and using the day as a training run: I decided that I'd take it relatively easy over the first 8-10 miles and then see where I was up to. In the event, I felt pretty comfortable running at a fairly easy pace and was happy with that, feeling pretty strong during the early and mid parts of the race. By about mile 10, I thought I was in with a chance of getting under 2:00 hours, so attempted to run a bit quicker. What I should say is that this came just at the time when The Hill appeared on the course, so it was only really after crawling up this that I attempted to "sprint" to the finish line. Having said that, I did feel strong going into the finish (doing a quick-for-me 8:12mm for the last mile), although the last few hundred metres seemed to go on forever: I'm sure they had moved the finish back a few hundred yards!

Jokes stats

Other thoughts? Well, although my time was nowhere near a PB for me, I was pretty pleased with my run and I did beat last year's time by over 7 minutes. I was also pleased I didn't get injured, as that really would have been hard to take. Again, it was great to be running in my home city: great to see so many familiar faces running and to see people I know (not usually runners) tackling a half marathon for the first time and doing really well. The atmosphere was amazing and the support was HUGE: it was fantastic to see bands, choirs, friends (and others) lining the streets of Brum to cheer people on. Brilliant!

Now my focus is on next week. In fact as I sit here writing, by this time next week, I will have either finished the race, or failed valiantly in the attempt. I have been gathering my thoughts about this, and will be sharing them soon....