So, today was the adidas half-marathon in the Phoenix Park in Dublin.
I’m pretty happy how it went. I treated this as a trial run for the full marathon in 5 weeks and, as such, didn’t care so much about my time. I just wanted to get a feel for running in a crowd, race preparation, registration, baggage drops, water stations etc.
I set off determined to work my way into it with a slow, steady pace and that I did, but after 11 miles I got chatting to a couple up from Waterford for that day and found out from them that I was actually going at quite a decent pace. So I put the foot down a bit and finished very strongly at around 1hr 55mins. Quite surprised at that really, I would have guessed that I was running around 2hr 10mins pace. Looking forward to seeing the official time.
I’m especially happy about how my preparation paid off today. I got plenty of carbs in over the last few days, had a good breakfast early this morning, made sure I was well hydrated before the start, drank plenty as I ran, had some energy gel along the way and made sure to get food and water into me as soon as I finished. No crash like after the run last week and I was even happy wandering the 5k to the other side of the park to get the Luas and DART home.
Roll on the October 29th.
Out And About 
Congrats on a great run, sounds like it went perfectly. I’m sure it’ll go just as well on the big day!