September 5th 2021 – Worcester Half Marathon
Mark Lister provided us with a report from this popular annual race…
I have done this event every year since it started in 2014, the 10k for the first three years and this was my fourth half marathon, and it was by far the hardest. Even with a 9.00 o’ clock start it was extremely warm and was only going to get warmer. I had a cunning plan to go under two hours. It involved doing 8:40 miles for the first six, because that part of the course is flat, and then 9:10 miles for the rest.
I saw Laura, Tor and Martin before the start as they were doing the 10K.
It started off well and I went through half way in 56:48, well ahead of schedule. Then it all went pear shaped. There are more hills on the second half of the course and there was virtually no shade. Despite taking on as many fluids as I could both before and during the race it was obvious very quickly that the conditions meant I could not maintain any sort of pace and I was getting quite badly dehydrated. My confidence was not helped when a woman in her 20’s collapsed in the road in front of me at about 9 miles. Fortunately there was a first aider on a bike who arrived within a few seconds. By now I was just concentrating on finishing and despite seeing another lad in his 20’s being treated for exhaustion a bit further on I plodded to the finish in 2:04:54.