Too Much Swinging On The Monkey Bars

I wake up and my legs aren’t too bad. It’s the aching arms, neck, back and shoulders that gets me. Too much swinging on the monkey bars me thinks. I’m just not used to upper body workouts.

Anyhow no time to spend lying in bed feeling sorry for myself because it’s L’s turn to get active today. So we jump in the car and head off to Birmingham where the World Half Marathon Championships are being held. Cool eh? Well actually, she’s not in that particular event but in the Birmingham Half Marathon that is being held alongside it. This is one of her ‘small regular targets’ that L says she needs on her horizon in the run up to her marathon at the end of the month. Small target? A half marathon sounds pretty substantial to me.

It’s drizzling with rain in Birmingham, which is ideal running weather but not ideal spectator weather. Not that Doggo is bothered, yes in a (another) brief moment of insanity I decided to bring the two dogs with us for a day out. He’s very impressed at seeing over 10,000 runners lining up and ready to race. He’s less impressed to see that he isn’t one of them. His agitation sets MD off, so I now have two hyper dogs on my hands. So in the best interests of the eardrums of everyone, I bid good luck to L and head off away from the start to hopefully find a less stressful environment, or at least get out of earshot.

Taking up a position a few hundred yards down the course, I position the dogs behind an advertising hoarding so that they can’t see the race. It works to an extent until Doggo hears people clapping as the race comes past and starts howling. After watching L go past, we move on again, before we are asked to do so.

We head up to the finish where the World Half Marathon is just finishing and hang around to catch the presentations.



Zersenay Tadese took the men’s title for Eritrea, his fourth successive win in the event, lowering the championship record in the process.



Kenyan Mary Keitany took the women's title, breaking Paula Radcliffe’s championship record. Radcliffe again being forced out by injury/illness, tonsillitis on this occasion.

Then we walk backwards along the course to find a good spot to cheer on L.



As we walk the last kilometre down to the 20km marker, it strikes me that we’ve been walking downhill almost the whole time, which is of course uphill for the runners. That’s just plain cruel and to think I (loosely) considered doing this race.



All three of us cheer L on and then attempt to find her afterwards amongst the other 10,000. Once reunited we head home to rest up before heading into town for something to eat and to see if there’s any decent beer on worth celebrating with. Fullers ESB, that’ll do nicely.

I would quite like to have gone out proudly wearing my 'Survival Of The Fittest' t-shirt but it’s now had its second wash and its still looking decidedly off colour. Perhaps I’ll save it for running in.