Reading Half Marathon & a new PR!

I am absolutely buzzing right now!! As the title of this post suggests I ran Reading half marathon today. It's only the second time I've run a half and the first time I've done Reading. The first one I did was in Cardiff and while I started off training really well, I went on holiday for three weeks about four weeks before the race and well, I didn't quite manage to keep up with my training! This time I've been training really hard and it totally paid off because I knocked 18minutes off my time for a new PR of 2hours 4minutes and 3seconds!!! So proud!!

It was a gorgeous day, in fact almost too hot at points - the last 1.5 miles on a long straight road with the sun beating down were tough to say the least! The course was flat for the most part, two hideous hills but the crowds were amazing and finishing in the stadium was an atmosphere I will never forget. Even gave me enough of a boost to sprint the last 100m! 

Massive thanks have to go out to my wonderful boyfriend Patrick for his constant support through my months of training and waking up super early this morning to wish me luck! He's always encouraging and motivating even when I'm having the worst days and I really couldn't have done this without him! Also a huge thanks to my parents for ferrying me around today and bringing my post run fuel - my mum even made me some delicious granola bars! And finally, but by no means least, I want to thank Jaki my running training buddy and Alecia for starting me off on a brilliant pace to lead me through to my fab time!

Would definitely recommend this race to anyone thinking of running a half marathon. It's a brilliant atmosphere, incredible crowds and a great course! Not to mention a stadium finish that gives you such a high!!