Half Year Report - PBs and PF

June 30th marked of course the half year point and also the date of the John Hartson Foundation Llanelli 10k.   First the 10k, as that went to plan!   Bit of a chilly morning and a blustery headwind for the first few km's but I set off aiming for something like 4.5 minutes per kilometer marker whilst thinking of trying to keep to that as best I could and hopefully better my PB set way back in 2010's Ammanford 10k.  I figured that with a new PB at both 5k and half marathon already this year then this would complete the hat-trick so to speak and even if I nearly died on that nasty little hill toward the end of the race as I did last time I ran the Llanelli 10k I'd have a bit of leeway to still come in ahead of 47:45.

2km - no bother!

As it was, I managed to stick to plan all the way through and the hill training and long runs helped no end in negotiating that tricky last mile this year.   In fact, looking at my Garmin stats post race, my mile splits were something like the most consistent

Up that bloody little hill about 8km

I've ever achieved :-

7:09, 7:13, 7:09, 7:06, 7:04, 7:19 and 7:00 for that final 0.2 mile.  A new 10k PB of 44:38 duly achieved.

So, onto the half year report and the year to date hasn't quite gone to plan.  If you've followed this blog since Janathon then you will know I had in mind the Tenby Marathon as

And back over the hill again - hurting now!

my first bash at the full distance but an injury to my right foot/ankle put paid to that.


I have however managed 668 miles to date so far but not without issues.  The old problem of plantar fasciitis has flared up in both feet again and whilst I think some of the pain may be down to this latest pair of trainers coming toward their 500 mile use by threshold there are issues to be resolved!  I've lived with this for a couple of years now though so know the regime pretty well.  The night splint, alternate iced water/warm water foot baths, rollers and zinc oxide tape are either back in use or in the case of the tape, on order.  Complete rest doesn't work for me as I'm on my feet all day at work anyway but it'll be easy runs in terms of speed for a while - other than races of course - and just try to manage my way through this once again.  A new pair of trainers will help but that will have to wait for the next pay day!

Schedule wise I'm still on a revised marathon schedule so looking at some 20 mile runs in the next few weeks.  If that goes well and the feet stand up (ooh... that was a bad pun!) then we may still be looking at an autumn attempt at 26.2 but if not there's plenty of shorter distance races to go for in the second half of the year.

Actually, the next race for me is only 2 weeks away and it's my hometown one - the Ammanford 10k.  It's a bit of a hilly one so unlikely to be PB territory this time but it's three years since I was last able to run it.  I actually ran most of the course during the 20 miler I picked up the foot injury on the other month so looking forward to having a go at it properly.

Will update the blog sometime after that race...