With 2 days to go until the Edinburgh Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon, my 5th half, I couldn’t be any more excited. The thought of running with 5000 or so other people is really appealing to my competitive side, seeing as the majority of the races I have taken part in over the past few months have only had a couple of hundred people taking part. Most of these people have been club runners and hell they are fast! Although my times are improving (I have taken 10 minutes off my half marathon time and 7 minutes of my 10k time since I started racing), I’m still placing quite far back overall. The last big race I ran was the Great Scottish Run where I placed 1460th out of 7770 runners so this weekend I would definitely like to place top 2000. I think that’s possible….

All week I have visualised the race in my head. When I entered the race earlier this year I put down my finishing time at around 1:50:00, but since then I have smashed my pb by a whole 5 minutes taking my time down to 1:48:11 and I know I have more in me. I haven’t raced this route before but I’m aiming for a pb and I think if I can sneak forward into the 1:45:00 corral I’ll be more determined to keep up with those around me. I finally splashed out on a Garmin Forerunner 410 last week and I can’t wait to try it out properly in a race. A while back I said I didn’t want one as I quite liked using Endomondo on my phone, but as my phone gets a bit older my battery can’t take the stress of gps, music and Endomondo all running for any great length of time. I think I would be heartbroken if it gave up the ghost in the middle of a race and seeing as it has already totally drained my battery while out on long runs the chances of this happening any time soon are quite high. Also being away somewhere on a long run and my phone dying scares me in case I fall and break something and can’t drive home. I’m known for being super clumsy, so this is bound to happen some day!
So, welcome into my life my lovely new Garmin!!!

I did sway with getting the 110 as it’s a bit more girly, but I liked the added features of this one. It’s a bit chunky but, again, seeing as I’m so clumsy I’m pretty sure this will be indestructible for me. I just need to remember to take it off when I’m in the pool teaching!! For some unknown reason I received the instructions in every language except English, so my poor husband Craig had to deal with me footering about with it, beeping every possible button and getting frustrated with the bezel, until he informed me I could download the instructions and didn’t have to guess how it worked. Yep, slight blonde moment there!

So off my shiny new Garmin and I go to add another medal to my collection. I’m aiming for 1:45:00 – 1:50:00, seeing as I don’t know the course. I’m hoping if I can stick to around 8 minute miles I’ll come in under my expected time. Now that I’m a serious (ha!) runner, I’ll actually be a bit gutted if I don’t bring home a PB. Time to rest up until Sunday…
Good luck to everyone running it and hopefully I’ll catch some of you there!

Race report will follow 🙂