Knackered of Tunbridge Wells

The Tunbridge Wells half is a tough, hilly half marathon that takes place in late February. Way back in the early noughties I ran it three times, each time as prep for a spring marathon, with times between 1:22 and 1:27 and a 23rd place when I managed that 1:22. This year I'm entered for the Barcelona marathon in late March, and so I found myself lining up for my first proper running road race since 2005. Because I missed a few weeks with an injury I trained right up to the race and foolishly ran an 18:20 5km in Bushy Park the previous morning so I was a bit tired to start with: coupled with not having done something like this for a while I had no idea what sort of time I was likely to do.

I got there in good time, mooched over to the start to get a coffee and realised that I had no cash at all apart form a few foreign notes that were kicking around in my wallet. Fortunately the man selling the coffees was willing to exchange a double espresso for a five euro note so I managed to get my fix. A little bit of stretching and I lined up at the front of the 2100 competitors and some bloke started talking to the assembled runners, including a strangely convoluted description of the course as something like "challenging, hilly yet reasonably fast" - you can't have your cake and eat it mate, it's either hilly or it's fast, and this course is hilly. The race was started by none other than local Olympic golden girl Kelly Holmes and as a sign of the times the start was slightly delayed while she took a picture for twitter. Here it is: I'm about 4 rows back wearing my bad-taste orange Oakleys.

After the twitter-fest we were off. Tunbridge Wells is on the Weald of Kent, a series of low hills, and the river Medway forms a valley next to it. The race heads Northwest out of town, drops into the valley after about 5km and then climbs back up in the second half, so it can be divided up into a series of distinct sections.

The first 4km or so are in rolling hills, with some fast downhills and some short sharp climbs. There is then a series of long downhills from about 5km to 9km, followed by the two big climbs, the first, in Penshurst, being shorter than Spring Hill, the second, which is hard and a couple of kms long, topped off with a long false flat. From 14km to 19 or so there is a series of false flats and rolling hills that are quite tough to maintain pace on, then the last couple of kms into town are mostly slightly downhill and a bit faster.

I didn't really have a plan, since I didn't have much feeling for what sort of shape I was in, but I had what you could call a vague feeling that the best thing to do would be to try to gain plenty of time in the first 10km because the second half was going to be hard. For the first km I just ran at a comfortable speed and was surprised to split it in 3:38 (downhill). The next one had some significant uphills and that went in 4:01, and then it was all comfortably under 4 minutes a km until km 10, including one at 3:34 which included a steep 11% downhill grade. I was through 10km in 38 minutes and some change, then it was onto the completely different second half which is mostly just a case of suffering through. The km splits grew and going up spring Hill I managed km 12 in the miserable time of 5:24. Not many people overtook me, though and I guess most people were in the same boat. My expensive sunglasses kept on fogging up but I didn't really mind because I didn't really want to see what was coming.

Finally over the top of the big hill and things were hurting a bit and I was not sure if I could keep a reasonable pace to the finish. I just kept on plugging away and managed to keep things at somewhere near 4 minute per km pace for the stretch from 13 to 20 mms, with a few deviations when it all got a bit much. Two little girls were counting the runners at about 15kms and seemingly having a great time (is this the solution to the nations numeracy problems?) and I found out that I was in 49th place, which was better than I expected. The last few kms were than just a matter of holding it together and I managed to dig up some speed from somewhere for the last stretch into town, then into the finish, didn't trip over any of the speed bumps and finish in 1:25:44, 53rd place. Kelly H gave me my medal: I wanted to tell her how her 800m race in Athens is one of my all-time favourite sports moments but I couldn't because I had no breath left. I did notice that she's a bit shorter than I would have expected - for some reason I expect all olympic medallists to be at least seven feet tall, rather than about five eight.

Overall not a bad race for me at all, I think, especially given the complete lack of any sort of taper. Obviously I had a big positive split with the second half several minutes slower than the first but that's mostly a consequence of the terrain and I was still running well at the end, although it was pretty tough for the last 5kms or so. The last time I did this race it was OK but nothing special in terms of organisation, but they've made some big improvements and it's got a good "big race" feel with bands applying along the route, great traffic management and everything running smoothly. Next up the Ballbuster Duathlon.