It seems I overdid it a little, when I wrote my last post, as I developed a bit of a swollen right ankle. Mostly from too much running on cambered surfaces that week, I think, although there are other factors. A week's enforced rest together with an easy start to this week seemed to sort it. So after a lovely day wandering about Corstorphine Hill in the sunshine yesterday, I decided to shoot for 1:30 in today's Edinburgh Forthside Half Marathon.

I had to get up early this morning, for a quick breakfast and then a walk to Princes St.—the bus which usually runs from outside my flat to Ocean Terminal, the start of the race, doesn't start until about 9 on a Sunday morning. Well, the walk woke me up, and I arrived at the start a half hour before the race. Which turned out to be exactly enough time to get to the head of the queue for the toilets, and onto the course for the start.

Starting out slowly, I kept pace with the runners around me, completely missing the first three mile markers and thus being generally clueless as to my speed. At mile four, I had been feeling a little worried about my ankle, and found out that I was a little behind schedule. It is about this point I find the race starts getting hard. Then came mile 5... where I found out that either my mental arithmetic was wrong, or the previous marker was, as I was actually running ahead of schedule.

From this point on, I spotted and got an emotional boost at each mile marker, I was doing great... After 7 miles the course takes a U-turn at Cramond, so you get to see the runners ahead of you heading back to the finish. As we headed towards this point, a very slow trickle of fit looking runners went by; after turning back and running for a mile alongside the oncoming (slightly) slower runners, those on the other side were more like four abreast to our single file, providing a good illustration of the bell curve.

From about 10 miles it's a bit of a struggle, and while I keep up with those I am following, my quads feel knacked, and it's clear I have no hope of regaining a couple of runners I was close behind earlier. I held on, and soon enough came back around Ocean Terminal. A last dash up the finishing straight, and I came past the line in about 1:25:30. Rather faster than I intended.

Update: results are up, 1h25m30s, position 102/2756. Bed now.