Gateshead Half Marathon:

I was due to take part in last year’s Gateshead Half Marathon. It was one of the local road races that I hadn’t run before. Unfortunately, COVID got in the way, and I had to drop out. So it was good to finally make it to the start line this year.

That said, It’s fair to say that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this one, partly due to the weather but mainly because I remembered a couple of hills from a 10K event that used parts of the same course. Oh, and this was a ‘two-lapper’, which meant those hills were going to appear twice.

The first lap didn’t seem to go too bad, apart from a strange dogleg on the Newcastle side where you looped back around a traffic cone. Even the hill back to Gateshead Stadium didn’t seem too painful.

Lap 2 started with a strange little detour before rejoining the same route as Lap one. This looked like it was thrown in to make the distance up, but it was a tad disorienting.

The second lap was starting to hurt as I crossed the Swing bridge back onto the Gateshead Quayside.

I was beginning to regret my early pace and the carefree way that I threw my race plan out of the window. But then I glanced down at my watch and realised that I was ahead of my PB time, with this revelation that I wasn’t having the disastrous run that I thought. I pushed on towards the stadium and that last 200 metres around the track.

As I entered the stadium, I channelled my ‘inner Mo’ and kicked for home, overtaking a few people on the way.

Not my proudest moment, if I’m honest, as I always say the only person that I race is myself and my own daemons, but there was something about running the track with a crowd in the grandstand that made me cast off the shackles of reason and shamefully sprint for the finish.

The race over, I was chuffed to bits that I’d managed to grab another PB. Albeit by needlessly sprinting the track. I would’ve beaten my PB if I’d just jogged that last 200M, so there’s a lesson for me.