Training Log Archive: Forest Demon

Bologna half marathon, all in the old town which was very cool.

It was supremely unclear if we were actually entered for this, classic Italians. We turned up at the event centre the day before to find out, and after some debate we were eventually handed some bibs and our goodie bags at a fraction of the cost we were expecting. They even seemed satisfied with the medical certificates (shout out to Dr Mark Purkis)

We were starting in the 1:45 - 2:00 block, so I went as far forwards as I could, to attempt to minimise the amount of passing I'd need to do. Really wasn't sure what I could aim for as a target, but I figured 85 minutes seemed reasonable.
The rain started again a couple of minutes before the gun went off, having totally pissed down all night. It didn't stop for the rest of the day, so it was really quite damp out there - a lot of water standing, sitting and running all over the place. Also a bit windy too, so it maybe wasn't ideal conditions, but at least it wasn't hot.
The Italian driving behaviour of ignoring red lights, treating pedestrian crossings as optional and generally being a bit insane also extended to driving along the allegedly closed course, and screaming angrily at marshals trying to stop them from running us over. It was a bit wild, but kind of funny in its own way to have to occasionally dodge an impatient Fiat.

I started off a little hard, classic move. Was kind of dying a bit, so I tucked in with the 90 minute pacers after 3km, who were speeding along at a pace closer to 85 minutes.
Stuck with that group and managed to recover a little bit, so when they got their balloons tangled at the halfway water station I set off solo, and one other dude came with. Ran with him for the next 10 km, before he kicked with 500m to go and I wasn't sure if I could follow without blowing up or not, so didn't. Then he didn't even say well done at the finish, the jerk, even though I'd just done a great job pacing him for half the thing.

Or at least I thought it was a great job, but it turned out my watch had gotten a bit confused in the buildings in the second half, adding on 600m extra distance. So when I thought my average pace was around 4:05, it was actually closer to 4:15, oops.
This does explain my confusion when I realised there was still a km to go at 84 minutes, even though I thought I was on track for 85-ish. So not the greatest paced run ever, but never mind eh. I could probably have afforded to hurt myself more in the second half, but I was a bit too scared of running out of steam, especially since it was the furthest I've run since about 2 years ago.

According to the official results:
1st half 42:43
2nd half 45:39
which doesn't add up to either gun time or real time, but that's not too surprising really.

TL;DR In conclusion: 10/10, was fun :), would run again.

C • Run 1

With Emily.

A really cool run up to Santuario di San Luca. The whole way up the hill was along a 3km portico, which was pretty neat, though there were some fairly gruesome steps.
Was very nice at the top at the Basilica, though we couldn't go inside as we were dressed like slutty heathens

With Emily, in Bologna.

Attempted to go up via San Luca, but I hadn't realised we were supposed to be running up a wall thing, so we went ended up in Parco San Pellegrino.
Great views of everything in the evening sun though, which was nice.