OK runners. Time to place your pre-orders now for my forthcoming coaching manual: how to run a half marathon PB. An exclusive peak at the contents involves top tips such as running a full marathon one week before, sharing a bed the night before with an eight year old nervous girl-octopus with twitchy legs, and wearing new shoes. But enough of the #humblebrag – all these reasons are, actually, precisely why I did run a half marathon PB. Because I took the pressure off myself and just ran. No looking at my watch (not until mile 12, anyway) and no worries about feeling that I ought to do well. Just run.

And there we go – 1 hour 26 minutes (and some seconds which is is ever runner’s right to ignore) later and at least, a new PB at Cambridge half. A more or less flat, fast course, with a great field, and very well organised apart from their inexplicable failure to turn down the wind and turn off the rain. Tsk, guys, work on that one. Then again, it does always seem to be windy in Cambridge – a fact my dad puts down to there being “no hills between here and the Urals”.

I’ve developed a bit of a jinx with half marathons in the year and a half since I last did a decent one. Stitches, cramp, dead legs.. you name it, I’ve had it. And what it took to overcome all this was just to relax. Well, relax and those new shoes – Saucony Type As, which I am now in love with. So light! It’s impossible NOT to run fast in them.

I did have a quite amusing internal monologue (well, it was amusing to me) at one point which I envisaged as taking place between Good Kate and Evil Kate – chanelling my inner Homer Simpson clearly. Good Kate said, “I think you are running quite well here” and Evil Kate piped up “But you ran a marathon last Sunday!” to which Good Kate said “SSSSSHHHH! Be quiet or the legs might hear!”. Hey, whatever it takes to get through mile 11, right?

But I know I am far from alone in a successful weekend racing. Massive kudos to Tara for smashing her half PB too – and a note that one of the things I love about this blog is that I know you will all be excited for each other/us as well. Inexplicably, we are not all surrounded in ‘real life’ by people who share our love of running and satisfaction in seeing hard training turn into PB reward. But here, below the line, you will always find it – along with sympathy with injuries, bad runs and advice galore. Over to you, guys …

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