{"id":1776,"date":"2014-03-10T21:09:37","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T21:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bl6.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2014-03-10T21:09:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T21:09:37","slug":"inverness-half-marathon-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bl6.co.uk\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/10\/inverness-half-marathon-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Inverness Half Marathon 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
John at the finish of the half marathon. Picture courtesy SPP, by Alison Gilbert<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have been steadily improving my times at the Inverness Half over the last few years so I was pleased to continue that trend at the weekend with a 1:41.55 – even though I was hoping to break 1:40 for the first time in a long time! I felt pretty wrecked at the finish having managed to run sub-8 minute miles for all but two of the 13.2 miles. That was some achievement for me and shows that my training is starting to pay off.<\/p>\n

That’s good news because on Friday I received confirmation that my team has been accepted for the Highland Cross again this year – so the half marathon is now just a stepping stone on the way to that much bigger challenge. Last year I ended up walking a bit of the last five or six miles of the ‘foot’ section so my aim this year is to keep running to the transition and see where that takes me!<\/p>\n

I had family up at the weekend looking after the kids while I ran – and my wife Meg ran the 5k, the first race she’s done since we were married in 2009! I can’t believe it’s been that long as we actually met at a 10k race so running has always been a big part of our lives. She ran a fantastic 25 minutes and just maybe caught the running bug again!<\/p>\n

My time saw me finish 419th out of 1703 finishers – see the full results here: http:\/\/www.invernesshalfmarathon.co.uk\/result\/36\/2014-half-marathon-results\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a snippet of video my dad took as I shuffled my way to the finish line:<\/p>\n