Putney Half Marathon, 24 Apr 2022

A very stressful lead up to this event meant that I really wasn’t expecting very much – a few weeks of travel disrupted my training plan and then to top it off I got Covid two weeks before the race! I wasn’t feeling optimistic and even considered giving my race entry away because I was concerned about making my (pretty light) Covid symptoms worse. 

A week before the event, however, I finally had a good workout post-illness and was starting to feel more like myself again. Nonetheless, I told myself I would ‘take it easy’, I didn’t want to damage myself – there are plenty of other half marathons that I can enter, but I only have one pair of lungs!

BUT on Friday (2 days before the race), I asked my boyfriend to bring me my pair of ‘go fast’ Saucony trainers to wear instead of my normal Brookes training shoe and it was at that point that I thought I might actually try for a decent time. My last half marathon was in September 2021 and it was my first half ever! I shocked myself with a time of 1h 44m – which I was very pleased with at the time. Now, with quite a bit more training under my belt, I thought that a time of around 1h 40 would probably be within reach, even given my turbulent lead up to the race. 

I got to the start line feeling pretty relaxed and basically just excited to race in London. I was in the second heat, out of about 8-10, so I was running with some fairly fast people. We all started off a bit too fast (classic!) but I managed to pull back the pace within the first kilometre, and settled into a comfortable rhythm of around 4:40min/km. I paced the whole race surprisingly consistently, with a marginally faster second half, and even managed to enjoy the scenery – at least to begin with.

The hardest part about this race was the fact that we did not have the paths to ourselves, and by the second lap (the whole course was 2 laps) the tow path and the bridges were getting very crowded. I had to do a lot of dodging of people, dogs, cars and even boats (as we ran past a bunch of college rowing clubs!). The positive side of this was the fact that we had lots of people clapping us on throughout the whole course and the atmosphere amongst the runners was also good! 

My mum, brother and boyfriend ran alongside me at the very end which gave me serious motivation as by the last km I was starting to suffer! I managed to finish 12th woman overall (out of 199) and absolutely smashed my PB with an official time of 1:38:44. What a race! It just proves to me that my training with Tim really is paying off. I didn’t have the best lead up to this event, but the consistency with which I’ve trained over the last few months pulled me through to a big PB nonetheless!

Emilia Miller