Cheshire Half Marathon, 17 Sep 2023

The initial plan on 10th September was to do the Great North Run, however it unfortunately became too expensive and logistically tricky to get there so I looked for a different half marathon event that weekend. With grandparents in Cheshire, the Cheshire Half seemed a great option with a “fast, flat course” advertised on the Run Through website.

Feeling speedy after the Cardiff 10k, I was excited to see if I could have a go at my half marathon PB. However, the morning of race day I felt a bit flat and tired. I had a very busy week at work, had been trying hard to recover from the 10k and it was a very warm week and weekend with poor quality sleep!  

The race was in a beautiful countryside location based at Capesthorne Hall. It was a reasonably sized field of 1143 runners and there were several speedy ladies who lined up in the sub 1:30 start pen. Off we went- a 800m downhill, off-road start before hitting the country lanes. I initially felt quite good and quickly reminded myself that I needed to slow it down to a half marathon pace and not get carried away. I settled in to target pace (6:40 min/miles) for the first 10k, but it quickly started to feel really tough and I didn’t have the mental or physical strength to dig in and try keep it going. It was very humid and I tried to hydrate and take on my gels to find some energy but I dropped back and was gutted as I saw a few ladies come past me. I wanted to pull out several times but as someone who has never DNF’d, I held on in there! I was quite close to another girl throughout the whole race so my motivation was to try and stick with her to the end, we had a bit of a sprint battle uphill towards the line but I didn’t quite have the legs to overtake her.

My final time was 1:30:51, which in hindsight was pretty good for the conditions. I was 11th lady (out of 464) and thought the course was fab (although not as flat as advertised!). Although tough I was pleased with my metal strength. I will be back at a later date to try and get that sub 1:28!

Megan Powell