The more observant among you will notice that the title of this post does not contain "Worthing" anywhere in it.
Unfortunately two days before Storm Ciara put paid to the event, and it was rescheduled. I frantically tried to book in for Brighton Half - much closer, but also much more popular, and I was denied. Not believing I could raise enough for a charity place in two weeks I was pointed in the direction of the Eastbourne Half by my lovely wife Dana instead. I'd never run it, only supported my baby brother when he ran it three years ago, so I signed up. The last few days in the run-up were spent analysing segments on Strava, a wonderful run report on Runnit, and Google Street View until the hill got too scary and made me cry.
Oh yes, unlike lovely flat Worthing, Eastbourne had a whacking great hill after the first 5k or so. Still, I should be warmed up by then, and it'll be all downhill after, mostly flat along the promenade. I could do this. When I signed up I put down my predicted time in the 2:00-2:15 category - a PB, as my current PB was 2:18 at the time, but I was secretly hoping to crack the 2 hour mark.
The Day Itself
After an earlier start than I would've liked, brought on by rail replacement buses (well done Network Rail for scheduling work blocking all trains to Eastbourne on the day of this event) and several trips to the bathroom, I bade goodbye to my wife and nestled myself quietly on the right hand side of the starting chute. I then edged my way across to the left hand side when I got a text from her giving her position on the left of the course as we headed out - I didn't want to miss the photo opportunities! A brief pose later and I decided to start taking it seriously. Plugging in my headphones I queued up a comedy podcast which got immediately quiet. Great.
On a previous long run I had an issue with my phone in cold temperatures, as the metal case would contract ever-so-slightly, pressing down on the volume button and making whatever I listened to go silent. I had prepared a backup this time round though - an old Nexus 5 without a sim card stood in and I opened up the podcast app...to find none of my podcasts had downloaded last night! I hoped that Spotify wasn't facing the same issue, as then I'd have a very quiet run, but thankfully it was up to the task and I could listen to some banging tunes instead. As well as this technical issue, my smartwatch GPS decided not to connect, leading to a reset around 3 minutes in, which ended up working as well as a stroppy teenager and became little more than a glorified stopwatch. All these issues in the first five minutes made me think that those Luddites might've had a point!
The music didn't let me down, serving up pop banger after pop banger as we ran through the town and out the other side. Five kilometres down, and we started going up. I knew this section would be hilly but it was fine, we wouldn't be going as high up Beachy Head as I went the other Sunday, so it'll be easier, right? I forgot that the gradient up Devil's Dyke is a lot more forgiving than this and I regretted leaving my crampons, pitons and Sherpa back at base camp. After breaking through the cloud cover, ducking an airplane cruising at the usual height, and getting higher than Snoop Dogg on an average Tuesday, we turned and descended back to town. This was somewhat easier than the preceding few kilometres!
Breaking out of the trees and along the seafront I was greeted by a cool breeze at my back, refreshing and pushing me along. I passed the five mile mark and with some frantic maths (fingers were involved, I'm not ashamed of admitting that) calculated that I was slightly behind a 2 hour pace, but it was all flat from here so I was confident of getting that back. The crowds started picking up as we ran through the main part of town, emphasising again the morale boost from having your name printed on your shirt and people cheering for you.
Under the pier at the six mile point I fired off a quick text to my wife with a rough ETA for when I'd see her, and politely requesting more water. We had walked this part of the route a couple of hours earlier, from the station to the park where the start/finish line was, so it was nice to be on familiar ground. I raced two small spectating children for a brief 50m portion of the course (and beat them - if they're going to challenge me I'm not going to let them win), did a bottle swap, bade goodbye to my wife and then embarked on the second half of the race as Britney's Toxic filled my ears.
Dana managed to swap drinks and take photos at the same time
There was a psychological blow of having passed my wife/the finishing line and now having to run away from them both, each step taking me further and further from them. I tried to shake it off, cursing myself for not putting any Taylor Swift on my running playlist, and a Dua Lipa track was not the right mood. A quick skip brought up a much better song and the ensuing endorphin rush settled my mood. I tucked in behind a guy in an orange vest who seemed to be going at much the right pace and turned my brain off for a bit - I didn't need to calculate my pace, look out for a supply drop, or acknowledge anybody cheering for me, so I could let my body go into autopilot for a bit.
Around mile 9 Rammstein gave way to the best song of the last decade and I rejoined the real world. Either my pacer was flagging or I discovered a fourteenth wind, as I decided I could go a bit faster and left the guy behind. The route took two right turns in fairly quick succession and I was fairly certain I was heading back towards the finish again. (I suppose the relative position of the sun would've been a bigger clue, but at this point such intelligent thoughts were beyond me.) In the shade of the marina, a nice cool breeze lowering my temperature nicely, I whipped off my sodden head ruff and stuffed it into my pocket. My rough calculations had me still on course for around a 2 hour finish - the 2 hour pacers I kept up with up and down the hill had disappeared in the distance, but my estimations still had me on for a good time.
I wanted to give myself every possible boost I could and delved into my pocket for some jelly babies. Pulling out the bag I was surprised that I only had two left - had I really been ploughing through them without realising? Delving deeper, passing my sweaty head ruff, I realised that they were tumbling around loose. Slightly disgusted I contemplated going without before reasoning that any additional liquid would be good rehydration, especially if they included bonus sodium crystals.
Apologies if you're reading this while you're eating anything.
A triple header of Chvrches tracks kept me motivated through an intricate course around the Sovereign Harbour - I think I've now seen it from every angle barring underwater - and I passed the eleven mile marker at around 1 hour and 40 minutes down. Just over two miles to go, twenty minutes to get sub-2, I'd need to pick up the pace slightly but it was possible. The opening drum roll of Born To Run filled my ears and I grabbed a bottle of water to cool me off from the final water point. There was a slight gradient up to the promenade but then it was all flat from here. I chuntered along, grimly focused on the leisure centre by the finish line, gradually reeling it in. I tucked in behind a broader gentleman to deflect the wind at mile 12 to give Dana an ETA for finishing. Spotify did its best to keep my pace up, the shuffle supplying two songs from Master Of Puppets and Black Sabbath's Paranoid to keep my blood pumping.
The final 500 metres of the Eastbourne Half Marathon course features a flat straight road, a slope down to a pedestrian subway, an echoey tunnel under said road, a slope back up to the road, a sharp right angle and a grassy finishing chute to the line. Not ideal for a sprint finish but I motored past my windbreak and gave it my best. I was expecting to see Dana at the finish line (somewhere in the crowds) so she caught me by surprise at the 500 metre marker, snapping away.
A lone runner
I wasn't sure how much time I'd lost in the earlier technical faffing but estimated it to be around 3 to 3 and a half minutes. Checking my watch I saw it was going to be close to finish below two hours but went for it anyway. Turning the right hand bend to the finish line I could see the clock showing 02:01:40 something. I knew I hadn't crossed the start line just as the clock started, but doubted that I'd taken two minutes to start. Sub two hours was gone, but barring a catastrophic collapse - I was fairly certain I could crawl over the line in time - I was going to get a new PB. I decided to make future James's PB attempts a little bit harder and carried on my pace rather than ease up.
Note the clock behind me
I crossed the line, grabbed a medal from a youthful volunteer (almost barrelling into the poor little mite and knocking him over), and stumbled to an open space. Dana had caught up with me fast enough to take pictures and found me napping peacefully a few metres from the finish line. I'd run my furthest distance since last year's aborted marathon attempt, and barring a slight stiffness early on when attacking Beachy Head, my knee hadn't whispered a peep of a complaint. I had earned my post run banana and non-alcoholic beer!
Was I disappointed that I didn't get under two hours? Yes, briefly. But when the blood returned to my brain and I could think rationally, I saw the positives of yesterday's run. I took nearly seventeen minutes (16 minutes 49 seconds) off my previous PB for that distance, which was on a mostly flat course to boot. I'd done a long run with poor preparation on unfamiliar roads with no detriment. And I left everything out there - there was no point looking back on the race where I thought "oh, if only I hadn't slowed to catch my breath/posed for a photo/stopped for a pint, maybe I'd have done better". There was no way I could have physically gone any faster. I'm proud of my chip time of 2 hours, 1 minute and 13 seconds.
I can very probably beat that at the rescheduled Worthing Half this autumn. It's a flatter course, I'll have an extra half a year to get fitter, and I'm confident of shaving 74 seconds off my time to get below two hours. For now though, the most important part is that I beat my brother's time at Eastbourne when he ran it!
