Reading Half Marathon!

In case you can't read that...it says 1:57.39! Under two hours! I'm totally chuffed and I've had a great day. The weather was perfectly chilly yet sunny (a little bit too sunny really, but I ignored that and powered on regardless!) and the race was so well organised and so much fun, with lots of people cheering us on and lots of bands and drums and students banging saucepans with wooden spoons along the way!

The official results aren't up yet, but my Garmin should be fairly accurate, I think. It's amazing how much mileage you add on weaving through the crowds - my Garmin reckons I actually ran nearly 13.4 miles, so I'd probably have come in at 1:55 if I hadn't been dodging people! I also managed am 8:22 mile which is quite frankly ridiculous, and only two of my miles were over 9 minutes...it couldn't have been better, really! My fellow Ealing Eagles all did brilliantly too, and some lovely friends of mine came to cheer me on and I went out for a celebratory lunch with them afterwards, so all in all it's been a really fab day and it's certainly put my fear of organised races to bed, I think!

Edit: my chip time is 1:57.40 but I think I'll give myself that extra second! Also, thanks to my friend Pete, here is a hilariously bad photo of me at mile 10. In my head I was all 'Yeah! This is great! Look how good I feel!' but actually I look ever so slightly crazed and extremely sweaty...