I was oo-ing and aah-ing about whether to take part in this race on the Bank Holiday Monday. It through my training schedule out of sync slightly and it was meant to be rather warm, but with only a couple of weeks until the New Forest Marathon, I thought it was a good idea to get a bit of practice in...

The Avery Fan Club and I arrived at the Race HQ and although it was a friendly atmosphere with a few first time half marathon runners, I have to be honest and say it was slightly unorganised.  There were two queues for race number collections, one for surnames A-L and the other line was for surnames M-Z.  The one issue here was, as you got nearer the front, the two queues seemed to merge together and nobody seemed to know if they were pushing in front or were in the wrong line.  Another slight issue was the fact that the start and end of the race were on the same road and although this section was busy with people walking backwards and forwards and getting themselves ready for the race, there were still cars driving up and down it trying to look for parking.  Seperate area for parking next year may be a good idea.  Slight issues here, but those aside, the atmosphere was good, the marshals and gentleman on the tannoy were brilliant and just after 10:00 we were ready to go.  I met up with Carmen To prior to the start of the race and we had a nice chat before it kicked off.  The racecheck visors seem to be a bit of a rarity at the moment, so it's always lovely to meet one of the #visorclub family at these small events.

I was told before the race that this was a hilly one, but flipping heck this was tough.  We started well and I hit my first mile semi comfortably in around six minutes, but from mile two onwards it was like a half mararthon helter skelter. The up's and down's were very tough and although I hit the three mile mark just over twenty minutes, it was impossible for me personally to maintain the pace due to the climbs and also the heat, but I kept going and tried as much as I could to get a good time.  The climb between four to five miles seemed to go on forever and once we were at the top, we were in the middle of the mid-morning heat with no cloud cover or shading from bushes or trees.  The sweat was pouring off of us at this point and a lot of the local residents were amazing and kept coming out of their houses with garden hoses to help us cool down, this was a huge help to us and for a few minutes we managed to not feel like we were melting in the August heat.

As this was a kind of 'out and back race', I did think that the treat for running up all those hills was to run back down them on the way towards the finish.  However, this was not the case and the slight change of course only seemed to add more hills and climbs.  The race enjoyable and although I wasn't going to get my usual sub-90 target, I did like the challenge of the climbs.  The heat on another hand was a completely different story.  Looping back now towards the finish line, I overtook the lead female runner and two other gentleman, but due to the sun I could not muster a real attacking end.  My legs were like jelly, I was hot and just wanted the race to end.  I crossed the finish line in 1:34:55 and although slightly disappointing I wasn't in the 1:2X:XX category, with hindsight I will take that.

The views on the course were lovely and although not unique (quite similar to Maidstone, Paddock Wood and Headcorn halves) it was certainly nice to be on the country roads and not in a major city.  The medal is lovely and as I finished in joint 12th (with the lead female) I got a nice little shout out on the PA system which was a lovely touch.

Thank you Canterbury for a great race.  Will I be back next year?  Let's see how the weather is....