Thank you to everyone for the pompom wishes before this race. There were times when it was really good to have that support!
This one was a bit different! The whole race takes place in and around Farnborough airport. I hadn’t really thought about it in advance, but was surprised to find the airport was open as normal with planes taking off and landing throughout the race. At least it was distracting, especially racing a plane alongside the runway on tired legs🛫
The entire route was tarmac, mostly around the runway and the airpark, with a small loop through trees around the perimeter road. None of it was particularly pretty though, even the two waterways we crossed were full of junk. It was described as flat, which it pretty much was (138m elevation overall)- a few ups and downs, but only mild and short inclines.
It was a fairly small race which I quite like - just over 2000 runners in the half - but still there were queues everywhere. We were advised there would be plenty of parking in town, and indeed there was when we arrived about 50 minutes before the race. But! Every one of the car parks had long lines to pay for tickets; Rushmoor council don’t seem to have embraced Ringo or any of their competitors and this was further exacerbated by the one and only machine (mostly) not accepting card payments. That was a long line and a long time to stand in the cold wind that prevailed at 8.30am on Sunday 🥶 At this point we seriously wished we had booked into the race hotel, which would have been relatively cheap and VERY convenient).
When we finally had a ticket for the car, it was only a short walk to the race venue. But NOT a short queue for the bag drop (a first for me). We inadvertently joined halfway through the queue, but the poor folk who joined at the back had another long wait. By the time we headed for the loos at least those queues had diminished - largely because everyone else was either at the start line already or still in the bag drop queue!
As we had no intention of running fast, we weren’t particularly concerned and simply joined in at the back, although we heard that some people were a good 15 minutes late starting!
While the course wasn’t very inspiring - to me at least - the marshalls were plentiful and lovely, there were more spectators than I expected and the water stations were well stocked (I almost missed the first one as I was busy looking the other way, cheering and clapping all the juniors coming towards us in their 800m event!).
The best bit was the end (isn’t it always?)😍; smoothly through to collect a lovely chunky wintery medal, a pair of gloves and a neck warmer, then on for some free cakes provided by a local church and a very welcome cup of tea!
We already knew this had been a pretty fast race the previous two years (pacers only go up to 2h15m, then Run/walk- which still came in not much after 2h30m), but neither of us were last, which is always a bonus😎. Photos were free, but none of mine are worth putting up in a post - the medal is far prettier!!!
Would I recommend it? I guess so if you want to run a half in January (Couchpotato2 and I wanted something to mark the HM stage of our marathon plans, always intending it to be a training run with added bling and support). It was OK... but if you can wait a few weeks, then I reckon there must be more interesting ones to choose from.
Still, it was a good day out and a great feeling to have run a half marathon again (my last official one being Vancouver, just over a year ago) 🏃♀️🏅💪
Murcia Half Marathon
Barnstaple Half Marathon
Canterbury Half
Manchester half 2024