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Gloucester Half Marathon Race Report by Edward Collier - July 2010

Why the "Gloucester" Half Marathon? It isn't really Gloucester's Half Marathon at all - for a start, it's held in Newent, which is nearer Wales than Gloucester. Maybe it should be rebranded "The Gloucester AC Half Marathon". Whatever - never mind where it's held - I've run the race many times - mostly when it actually was held in Gloucester, and when the course seemed to change every year (and that's a good thing, by the way). Since it moved to Newent I've run it four or five times - once in teeming, driving rain, and twice when it was unbelievably hot.

This year the conditions were ideal. Warm, still, slightly overcast. There was a small but healthy contingent of AAs in the hall before the start - Karen Galpin, Jean Bryan, Phil Withers and Dave Davey among them. At the start I saw Dave Elliott and Virginia Pawlyn, who told me that she was gunning for 2h 10m, which I note from the results that she hit on the nail. In the car park we had a small pep talk from the organiser, and then we were led the hundred yards or so down the road to the start.

The first mile is very narrow, so I didn't do my usual trick of starting at the back and working my way through. In front of me Dave Elliott was doing wondrous side-steps as he weaved in and out of people. Had he ever played outside-half for Wales, I wondered. Finally, the bottleneck cleared and we were on a reasonably wide road and heading out on the lollipop-shaped course (about 2.5 miles of stick, and 8 miles of loopy lollipop). Out and up.

Up.

And up.

I can only assume that the course consultant was M C Escher, the Dutch graphic artist most famous for drawing impossible structures - I'm thinking particularly of his staircases that only go up. Because every time I raised my eye to the horizon I was looking up, and not down. There were some descents, I suppose - small, sharp and no respite or fun at all, while the rest of the race seemed to consist of interminable drags. Still, I didn't let it get me down.

All in all, I was pleased with my result (a shade under 1h 29m), which was nearly ten minutes quicker than my time in 2008 (when it was blisteringly hot), though I note from the results archive that I did run 1h 23m in 2001. I also beat Aileen Brown of GWR (GWR in Bristol was my last club but one; Aileen has run under 37m for 10k and is a hard competitor) as well as Paul Barnes of Cheltenham Harriers, whom I have rarely managed to beat before. So something must be going right.

It's a very well organised race, with plenty of marshals and lots of water stops. However, the race did have a very odd goody bag. I don't know if there were all identical, but mine contained two bottles of Lucozade Sports Drink, a can of fizzy Ribena, two extremely under-ripe bananas, a bottle of mouthwash and two sachets of Horlicks. I'm trying to figure out who they think their target demographic is. I've also heard that the bag makes a good receptacle for post-race vomit, but I've yet to have this confirmed.