Brass Monkey Half Marathon 2014

The Brass Monkey Half Marathon in York is a very popular race.  The 1700 start places sell out in a matter of minutes. Zoe and I were lucky to get in as the website was overloaded and kept crashing.

After a very festive December and limited number of training miles during January, it was decided that we were not in the best shape. Therefore, we would not be racing this one, rather just use it as a good training run in our build up for the London Marathon in April.

My lucky weather streak in never having run a race in the rain came to an abrupt end. We huddled together to keep warm as the cold fat rain fell upon us as we lined up at the York racecourse start area . We purposely positioned ourselves towards the back as we intended to start off at a steady pace and ease into the race. A negative split was the order of the day. It was clear to see there was a large number club runners from far and wide in the north of England. Large groups of runners from each club standing together in their club shirts.

We were happy to start running once the race begun, a chance to warm up and get our cold muscles working.  We soon got into a steady rhythm and our pace was averaging 7min 20sec per mile.  That seemed fine and we headed out into the country roads towards the south east of the city.  The race course was mostly flat and rural.  We were constantly passing runners and keeping a solid pace going. The plan was coming together nicely.

After the first few miles, the rain eased off.  We clocked our halfway time at approx 48mins and we were feeling good. We started to slowly pick up the pace and headed for home.  Zoe was running really well but I was starting to feel fatigue creeping in. I dug in behind Zoe and ground out the last few miles.

We crossed the line together in 1hr 36mins and felt very happy as we had stuck to the plan and ran a solid time. I was really impressed with Zoe's performance and am confident that she will have a stellar year and PB's galore.  As for me, a decent race to kick the year off and now time to knuckle down to some hard training as London Marathon will soon be here. I so want to put things right this time after the huge disappointment I suffered at the same race in 2012. All roads lead to London!!