Ouse Valley Way Trail Half Marathon, 21 Sep 2025

This was my first running race for nearly three years, with a variety of niggling issues meaning I haven’t been able to run much. On two occasions during that period, it looked like I was back and getting up to running fitness, only for another, different, issue to hit me instead. It’s been a demoralising time for sure. Since the beginning of the year, I had focussed on cycling so that I could exercise regularly without injury risk, but after 2-3 months I reintroduced running just to keep it ticking over. With a shorter than intended cycle race season, I decided to try once again to build my running and see where we got to. I had a deferred entry to the Ouse Valley Way Half Marathon (which I was unable to do last year) and decided to aim for that, while not thinking about any other races at all until this one was completed.

Since early July, I’ve been rebuilding my running fitness, meaning that by the race I was in reasonable shape to complete the distance, and intending to aim for sub 2 hours which ought to be possible even on a bumpy trail half marathon. I had also managed to recce the parts of the course I didn’t already know – one of the benefits of it being a very local race! In the days leading up to the race, some rain was forecast but, it turned out to perfect, with some sunshine and cool but pleasant temperature. After helping with race organisation beforehand, I arrived at the race start in Godmanchester ready(ish) to go!

The start was fast as always but I tried to balance my pace with not getting overtaken by too many people, conscious of quite a few kissing gates in the first kms that were going to cause some delays (a couple did, but not too bad). My watch kept shouting at me that I was going too fast (I had a pacer set for a range of 5:37-5:18/km) so for the first 6-7km I was trying to be conservative, letting a few people overtake and managing my pace in the hope I didn’t regret it later. After this the ground was easier until over halfway, so I tried to chill out and conserve my energy for later, knowing that the hardest trail section was near the end. After a very quick gel stop at about halfway, it was time for more trails, and once it started getting hard I was able to reel in some of the people I had been able to see up ahead of me. The final section of trails was extremely hard, cracked and very bumpy, and for the first time I dropped below target pace a couple of times. My legs were very sore by then but I tried to keep going, and finally I got to the road, with a few hundred metres of blessed tarmac before a final very mild trail to the finish.

Finish time: 1:52.01 so well under my target time, and I came 22nd out of 102 which I’m very happy with. Now I just need the feeling to return to my quads so that I can carry on training!

Tim Phillips