A Journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step

Chippenham Half Marathon - Sept 2010

My focus for the last year has been in trying to improve my swimming for a potential Long Distance Triathlon, so I have done little running.

Despite this I have improved my times for the Compton 40 and Marlborough Downs 33, this was to be a test of improving my 1/2 marathon time as well.
It was a warm sunny day as I cycled the 6 miles to Chippenham. I arrived in plenty of time to allow me to change out of my cycling gear and into running gear, I sat in the sun for 20 minutes before we all made our way to the start.
I positioned myself in the 1:45 pen, I was vaguely hoping to get under 1:45 and if I could improve on my time from 2008 of 1:39 I would be very pleased and satisfied that I could train for a triathlon with little emphasis on the running aspect.
I had spent the month of August as a volunteer on a Whale Shark research project in Mozambique, which involved a lot of snorkeling and scuba diving and no running. Not ideal preparation for a 1/2 marathon but this would also test my theory.
The first 3 miles past at a 7:45 min/mile pace so was looking good for a reasonable finish time. I then found it progressively harder to maintain this pace and at the 7 mile point my pace had dropped to 8:05 min/mile and by 10 miles was 8:20 min/mile.
Over the last 3 miles even with my efforts to go faster my finishing time of 1:52.36 shows that I slowed even more over the last 3 miles to 8:33 min per mile.
On the face of it, a disappointing performance, but I does mean that even if swimming training might work for longer distance races (Compton 40 and MDC 33), to be able to race shorter distances I need to do some running training.