Another milestone broken!
Tue 5th August 2008
Considering the difficulty in running a half marathon Team Solihull Respect have been doing (some) preparation. This weekend the Team (Ben, Heike and Paul) ran the Tenbury 10k as part of our race build up. On the drive there, the lovely rural countryside became the lovely rolling rural countryside before becoming the lovely hilly rural countryside. On arrival we noticed that the field consisted almost entirely of skinny greyhound shaped athletes in singlets – no mums with pushchairs, no silly wigs or blokes with “dad” written on old sweatshirts.
At the gun we had a good starting position, although we did notice that some of the others seemed to think it was a sprint! As we rounded the first corner and started up the first hill, everybody just ran off, including Ben! After about 15 minutes into the loop we saw the first athletes coming back the other way – surely some mistake! The weather was glorious, the lanes verdant, the hills steep and long. Luckily with my constant encouragement keeping the morale up, Heike and I managed to get around in a creditable one hour and six minutes, Ben preferring to run on his own in 57 minutes. We’ll get you next time, Mr Williams! We did manage to hold off the fast approaching “Wilf” who, despite being only 78, still took nearly 5 minutes more than us. Twelve weeks to go!
