I had a great day running the inaugural Humber Coastal Half Marathon in Cleethorpes on what turned out to be a warm, sunny day.

Over 20 club members were tempted to travel the hour or so to Cleethorpes on the promise of an ice cream in the entry fee, and fish and chips afterwards and we had a great day out. The race had sold out quickly and many others were upset to have missed out.

The course was out along the seafront for the first few miles, then around a caravan park and a loop into the countryside before heading back along the seafront to finish on the promenade. The support on the countyside section was sparse except where the course passed the edges of villages, but the race had attracted quite a following from the caravan site and the run back along the promenade was through crowds of supporters and day-trippers.

The race organisers were very engaging via social media in the run up to the event and in the last week sent out a daily email update, which meant I felt well informed about the logistics of the race prior to race day.

The goodie bag was excellent: a technical t-shirt, nice medal, drawstring polyester bag, bottle of water, stick of rock and a voucher for an ice cream.

The first aid and marshals were also excellent - my running partner suffered from heatstroke in the last mile and was well cared for by the first aid team at the finish line.

My grumbles about the event (which I'm sure will be easy to resolve) are:

The starting pens were chaotic as a result of the timing pens being too small and only allowing entrance from the back. The estimated start times had been placed on lamposts and were 1.25-1.40, 1.40-2.00, 2.00-2.30, 2.30-3.00 and 3.00+.

Unfortunately each of these times covered only one lampost, and I don't think whoever had set this up had really considered this properly. There is a massive difference between running 2.30 and 2.00 for a half marathon; I know that for myself 2.30 is an easy pace, my PB of 2.13 was extremely hard, and 2.00 currently seems almost impossible. It felt like half of the 1,600 field was crammed into a very tight space between 2 lamposts and as the start time loomed I was feeling very claustrophobic. One of my friends was kicked by another runner who was trying to stretch in the pen and then had to keep stopping in the race itself to try and ease the injury.

The starting pen entrance issue meant that faster runners who were slightly later arriving couldn't get to their expected finish time pens at the front and so the first 2-3 miles of the race (which was on an already narrow section) was spoilt by faster runners pushing their way to the front (often literally) and at times me being stuck behind slower runners who had started ahead. This first section would have put paid to a PB for many.

My second grumble was the running surface at around 8 miles which seemed to be large rocks and house bricks and could have easily led to a broken ankle had the majority of runners not decided to walk or try to stick to a small grass verge at the side of the main path. This inevitably led to a slowdown and disrupted my running rythym. The section following this 150m stretch was also great - I'm used to running on trails, but found that the loose gravel was unforgiving on my already sore feet, and seem to bring out my minor knee and ankle niggles.

As I said early on, the grumbles are minor ones and can hopefully be easily rectified and I had a great day and really enjoyed the race overall.

I would definitely run this race again and I look forward to 2018 and another ice-cream!