Birmingham Half Marathon – 11/10/2009
After recently completing the 3 Peaks Challenge, the Roade Sprint Triathlon and a photography holiday in Italy (where I ate excessive amounts of pasta!) I hadn’t had any time to train for the Birmingham Half Marathon. Added to that, for the past week my knees have been hurting for some reason. So I wasn’t really feeling up to participating. However the day before the race my knees suddenly felt a lot better, so I decided to give it a go – I knew I wouldn’t be anywhere near as fast as fast as last year (1 hour 39 minutes), but the experience is always good. So after watching a film and playing Rock band 5 with Kevin, I decided to get my kit ready. By 01:00 everything was packed and I went to bed. At 06:30 I got up, had some porridge, then left my house at 07:15.
Getting there:
I shot up the M1, then got stuck behind a police van on the M6, doing just under 80mph for ages. Some people overtook it slowly, but I wasn’t going to as I have been pulled over for speeding a few times and it is annoying – not the getting done for speeding bit, but the stupid talk they give you before they either give you the ticket or let you off. Eventually they slowed to 70mph, so I crawled past them until they were a speck in my rear view mirror, then I hit the accelerator.
Once in Birmingham I was expecting to see signs for the Half Marathon but there weren’t any. The website wasn’t very clear on where the start was and my sat-nav was having an off-day (thought it was in Spain – has never done that before!) so I drove around for 40 minutes before stopping to ask a race marshal I saw. He wasn’t sure where the start was, but said I should park my car where I was and then walk from there as it was just a short walk.
So I parked my car (in a slightly dodgy looking part of Birmingham), wrote down the name of the road, marked the location on my GPS watch and then walked into the centre of the city. On my way there I asked a few marshals I saw if they new exactly where the start was – and they didn’t know! The short walk ended up being a 25 minute walk+jog. I eventually found the start of the race but I was sweating by the time I got there!
Baggage:
I then looked around for the baggage area but couldn’t see any signs for it, so I asked some marshals but they didn’t know <sigh>. So I asked a competitor and she told me where it was – a 5 minute walk away! The was really bad… Once I got there, there was a long queue and I was a little apprehensive because it was due to close in 5 minutes time. Luckily though the queue went down really quickly and there was no queue for the actual baggage drop-off.
Comfort stop:
Before a race it is always a good idea to visit a toilet, so on the walk from the baggage area to the start line I looked for one. All of the toilets in the buildings had really long queues so I went outside and found a long row of portaloos with slightly shorter queues. After queuing for 7 minutes I got in and used one; luckily I didn’t need a number 2 as there was no paper!
Racing line:
The start line was really disorganised. As this was my 3rd Half Marathon I knew what to expect, but many people didn’t. The organisers had given every runner a bib with a number and a colour. The colour related to the runners expected race time. On the start area there were coloured balloons which related to runners bib colours and runners were supposed to stand behind the balloons, but many people didn’t know this, which meant that there were a lot of slow people at the front of the race, which slowed everyone else down.
Dame Kelly Holmes was on the starting line giving people high-fives, so I queued up and high-fived her before stepping over the start line 
The start:
With a lot of slow runners around in front of me and narrow roads, the first few miles were very slow.
Despite that I was feeling surprisingly good given my lack of training and poor diet recently.
The middle:
Half way in I was still doing okay but my lack of training was starting to show. Plus the course seemed to be mostly flat or uphill with no long downhill sections to rest on. In the 3rd section of the race my pace dropped off quite a bit, I was conscious of jogging up and down but not much forward motion – I was getting tired due to lack of training.
The end:
The last 2-3 miles were all uphill and the last 2 miles especially were quite steep. However I managed to pass a couple of people at the end on a (very slow) ‘sprint’ finish.
Here is my GPS output from the race.
After the race:
After crossing the line I found it quite hard to walk (harder than other races), I think it was because the last 2 miles were uphill and hard going. Then there was quite a long walk along a fenced corridor where:
- One person gave me a medal
- Another person gave me a keyring
- Some runners had been given goody bags, but most had not. This was confusion. I actually walked back a bit (against the flow of runners walking towards me) to try to find someone handing out the bags, but I quickly gave up
- Then there were people at the side who were giving out various sized t-shirts (only a few of them were shouting out which sizes they were giving out, so that was confusing and caused runners to bunch up on those people)
- Then there was a queue of runners waiting to receive a ‘goody bag’ (I walked past the queue and found helpers giving out the same goody bags – but no queues)
Instead of all that, there should have been a stand of helpers giving out bags whcih contained various sized t-shirts. That would have sped things up, prevented any confusion and would have required fewer helpers
People walking to the baggage area
Once I had all my goodies, I walked (slowly and painfully) to the baggage area where I opted for a free massage. They had around 20 tables set up with 2 people table. The people giving the sports massages were from a local college which was a good idea. After a 10 minute queue I lay head-down on the table and got a leg massage which lasted about 5 minutes. After which my legs actually felt much better – far less stiff and sore.
Then I collected my bag, put on my shirt and trousers and made my way back to the start line to see what was going on.
Castle Fine Art Shop
On my way there I saw a fine art shop so I popped into there for a look around.
Drum Band
Then I looked around the main area where they just had a drum band – I took some videos: Video 1 and video 2.
Water Fountain
After that, I used my GPS watch to find my way back to my car – 30 minute walk 
As I was counting that all of the wheels and windows were still in place, a young girl cycled up to me and asked if I had won the race. I replied “Not this time…”.
Hometime:
I jumped into my car, turned my sat-nav on (which was now working fine – typical!) and headed home, only to be confronted with traffic.
Stuck in Traffic
I was on the same short stretch of road for half an hour, so I got bored and made this video.
Overall:
Although I was 9 minutes slower than last year, I am quite happy with the time I did (1:48) because most of the course was uphill, I hadn’t had a chance to do any training for it, I had recently been to Italy where I ate far too much and my knees had been hurting (and did hurt during the race).
The only downsides to the day were the very poor organisation – the event wasn’t signposted, poor information on the website, the marshals didn’t know anything and the baggage area was not signposted.