brighton half

[Fiona P]

Starting to realise it’s going to be a good day when I line up next to Steve!
We got to the start a bit late and ended up further back than intended. That was fine – my legs weren’t so much sore but a bit stiff from muddy hills the day before. Thought I’d see what happened and play it by ear. After the race Steve D said he thought we’d got lost at the start – he was standing about 500m from the line and wondered what took us so long to pass him. Something along the lines of looking like we were out on a normal Sunday run…which is kind of what we were supposed to be doing. The first mile was 6.31 and then I didn’t really look at my watch again. Got updates from Steve that we were going a bit fast…reverse de ja vu from Hastings. Marc caught up with us around the Old Steine and he soon sped off. We saw a lot of Brighton vests and there was a fair bit of chat in the first half of the run (though less as I started feeling the pain), particularly when we noticed Simon up ahead. We came up with a few potential plans about whether to let him know we were there or not. At the turn Steve was given a bit of abuse for running with me (“Steve, you’re shit, you’re running with a woman”)! We caught up with Simon and then there was a pack of red vests running down the seafront. At mile 6 my legs didn’t seem to be suffering too much more than they were at the start line so decided to keep going at the same pace. Steve was given a bottle of his magic formula rehydration stuff at the aquarium and was good enough to share it with Simon and me, a godsend after the fun and games trying to drink out of paper cups. The boys decided to ease off the pace in the incline past the aquarium and I caught up with Mike. We ran to the marina together at which point I apparently opened up about 50m, though was feeling it now. Mike closed the gap on the run back down Marina Parade and passed me with a couple of hundred metres to go. Managed to take a minute off my pb and as a result have been avoiding walking downstairs all week! Great day for everyone, seemed to be loads of pbs and fab team results. Thanks to Simon for organising a great post-run feed.