At the end of last years report about this race that I didn’t know if I’d do it again. Turns out I know myself better than I think and I did indeed have a change of heart. I still left entry until about 10 days ago but I did so because I felt confident that I was better prepared and I could give this a better shot than I did last year.

I was right.

As with last year I studied the route profile (in the image above) but this time I programmed my Garmin with a workout of laps giving the distance of each incline, decline or flat section. It meant that when I was on a hill, I could tell how much further I had to g. It was an experiment in psychological motivation but I think it paid off – I successfully managed all the hills, strongly and steadily and made up the pace on the other sections.

The result? A new pb of 1:42:44 on a challenging course, beating my target time by over 2 minutes. Unlike last year, I feel very pleased with that how the race went – which just goes to show that sometimes, it’s not the course that needs to change, it’s the runner.