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5 Weeks Left.
Vigo is 100 miles from La Coruña and the clocks went forward at the weekend. The half marathon began at 11.00 which is fairly civilised. However I had to pick up my race number beforehand, which meant being there before 10.00. As it was a friends bithday on Friday, we took the opportunity stay the night with her and her husband in a village about 10 miles from Vigo. We picked up another friend on the way, part of my support crew and met up on Saturday night in a bar in Vigo.
Naturally, being someones birthday one has to celebrate, and as the bar was one of the many Irish theme bars that have sprung up all over the world one has to celebrate with guiness. Then of course after watching the rugby its time for dinner. Pizza, wine, coffees etc. Back to Porriño, a quick beer while chatting and the next thing I know is that its 2 in the morning.
So my pre-race preparation was not exactly perfect. Luckily, while the rest of the household was showering, having breakfast and so forth, I managed an extra ¾ hour sleep. I arose at 8.45 had a quick cup of cofee with a couple of excellent shortbread biscuits made by my friend Belén and off we all set at 9.00 (or 8.00 in real time).
The morning was clear, bright and cold. The thermometer in the car indicated 5 degrees. We arrived at the starting line in front of the Grand Hotel on Samil Beach at 9.30. There was a list with the runners names and numbers stuck on the window. I found mine and collected my bag with race number, t-shirt and timing chip. By the start was a stand giving out aquarius, an isotonic drink made by coca cola, so I grabbed one of those. We found a café on the beach and had cofee and croisants.
After emptying the system it was time to warm up a bit, which was quite difficult considering it was so cold. My cheer squad had retreated to the car. I queued up to activate the timing chip and ran a few lengths of a little road perpendicular to the start. We were called to the start line at 10.55, I put myself just past halfway, probably in position 600 out of the 1,100 runners (of whom 50 or so were women). We waited at the start for 10 minutes, a delay of only 5 minutes is something quite unusual here, normally its a fair bit longer. Just as my arms began to go numb in the cold the starter fired his pistol and we were off.
We ran just over a kilometer up the road to a roundabout, turned round and ran back to where we started, turned round just beyond the start and carried on past the roundabout.
At this point I should describe my tactics for the race:
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