St Albans half: great race, shame about the loos

I had been humming and hawing about doing this race. Post-injury nerves, and the glaring fact that my injury had not fully recovered from VLM - in fact, it had just transferred itself to a different part of my right leg - meant that I couldn't stop thinking I was a bit reckless to go for a half marathon race. But my physio said to go for it, with the caveat that I had to stay up all night beforehand stretching (warning: slight exaggeration), so off to St Albans I went on Sunday morning.

Setting off later than planned was not a good start either, so the nerves were at a premium when I arrived. Parking space duly found, I arrived at the runners village to announcements of a record turnout for the race. Unfortunately no one had passed this info on to the person in charge of ordering the portaloos, so there were about 15 loos for about 3000 people. You can imagine the debacle this created 40 mins before the race, with queues virtually down to Radlett, and the announcer desperately telling people to go elsewhere and find alternative loos!!

Luckily, Beloved had accompanied me for moral support and a post race pub lunch, so he headed off to a nearby leisure centre and phoned through confirmation that there were accessible loos, and that the queue was manageable. So my warm-up consisted of legging it over to the leisure centre for a pre-race toilet stop and I was in my pen 15 minutes beforehand. No thanks to the organisers though, and they really need to sort out the toilet situation next year.

Fortunately, the toilets were the only blot on the day (although the runner who decided to kick a tennis ball out of the gutter into the path of his fellow runners wasn't much of a highlight either). The weather miraculously defied forecasts and was warm and sunny. There were loads of water stations, all well organised. The course is great, with loads of evil but short hills to really test you, and loads of downhills to get you going again. I love running through the country lanes - it feels like a real switch for me, compared to my usual London routes.

There is a walking half marathon that sets off two hours before the run, and that caused a bit of congestion with the slower walkers at the very end (seemingly the slower you walk, the more likely you are to walk two abreast and block the narrow country lanes) but as no one was allowed to wear headphones, I was at least able to ask people politely to move to the right and be heard.

The finish is really well organised, with medals, appropriately sized t-shirts (London marathon organisers take note, it is possible to afford different sized t-shirts with an entry fee below £30), drinks and the best post-race treat of all - an orange ice lolly! This might not be so well received on rainy days, but yesterday it really hit the spot.

But best of all, my injury held up. One mild twinge at mile 7, but it passed as quickly as it came on and I was able to run a really steady pace, with a teensy eensy weensy negative split. My last mile was my fastest and I consistently passed runners in the last four miles. Not only did I finish strong but I knocked over 4 minutes off my previous course record, finishing in 2:06:59 (the best seconds of all). Given that my half marathon PB is 8 minutes faster than my previous St Albans time, I'm now really hopeful of achieving a sub 2 hour half later this year. It was a brilliant confidence-boosting race on all levels.

All that stretching clearly paid off and I really owe my physio a pint for getting me to the point I can race again. With 3 weeks to go before the New York marathon training starts in earnest, I'm going to take it easy and keep up the cross-training and strength work, to make sure the legs are as fit as they can be before the heavy mileage sets in.