David Howarth reports:
I’ll always associate Retford with Nottinghamshire and England batsman Derek Randall, one
of my boyhood heroes. Now it’s also somewhere I ran a half marathon.
I’ve discovered that if you want to maximise points in the club championship, do the half
marathons because there are fewer MACs than at parkruns and 10ks. Just five of us made
the hour-long trip over to Retford.
The course starts and finishes at the Oaks academy, not far from the centre of Retford. It’s a
relatively flat course (100m ascent) and mostly rural on closed roads. My minimum target
for this race was to run faster than I did at Worksop last October (1.53.25) with my stretch
target to get under 1.50. I didn’t have a target pace (although if I’d being going slower than I
wanted I would have ramped up the effort, and probably paid for it later). Instead I ran by
feel, the best pace I could churn out that I felt I could hold for the whole race. There is an
out and back section on the course where I gave Mark (ahead of me) some encouragement,
running in the opposite direction. At half-way I felt good and as the race progressed further I
could feel the sub 1.50 was on. So different to the fells, metronome like, churning out the
kms, but they do pass quickly. Unlike Worksop this time I didn’t fade and was very satisfied
to finish in 1.48.38.
Other MAC runners times’ as follows: Ben Meakin (1.23.10), Mark Moriarty (1.39.23), Roy
Austin (1.52.39) and Sarah Austin (2.14.11).
