Cardiff Half Marathon – Frank

This was the 2nd time that I have taken part in this ever popular city Half Marathon and both times the weather has been perfect, bright morning sunshine, reasonably warm, little or no wind, so why can’t they have weather like this when I take part in road races in MID Wales, the rain at Tregarron and the snow whilst plodding around the Elan Valley dams springs to mind! The other Croft runners who took part in that will know what I mean.

With a reported 19000 entries (although apparently only 14000 finished??) the start was very crowded, I spotted a few of my fellow Crofters and even managed to chat to some of them. Although this is a relatively easy course, half marathons like any long distance race are never easy.

I felt ok and confident at the start so set off at a reasonable pace and spent much of my time overtaking slower runners, or maybe they set off fast and slowed as the run progressed, anyway I pushed as hard as I could as I considered this to be a good chance of improving on my PB which I set at Hereford, of all places, in 2011. Not being able to get close enough to the front was a slight tactical error which partly caused me to run a total of 13.24 miles which was the result of me having to deviate from a direct route in a place or two to avoid getting blocked by other runners. Oh well, my PB was unachievable this time but I tried as hard  as I could, my existing pb went by with less than 0.15 miles to go!

Enough of my maniacal rambling – I’m sure the one thing the reader is interested in are how the Croft Ambrey participants fared:

The results are as follows;

Name                                   Gender/Pos.                 Gun Time                Overall                Chip Time        Chip pos.

Mark Lamonby                   MSEN    121                 01:22:45                 231                       01:22:20          228

Martin Williams                  M45-49    43                  01:29:20                 540                       01:28:55          549

Gemma Mallett                  FSEN      58                   01:36:12                1114                      01:35:55         1248

Paul Price                           MSEN     631                01:38:29                 1382                     01:37.00          1399

Neil Taylor                          M55-59    26                  01:37:55                 1302                     01:37:22           1448

Jon Briggs                         M40-44    163                01:39:00                  1476                    01:38:26           1621

Mark Griffiths                     MSEN      784                01:41:06                  1728                    01:39:38           1829

Frank Luscott                    M55-59     38                  01:41:39                  1807                    01:40:47            2010

Gary Gunner                      M65-69       9                  01:45:47                  2490                    01:45:17            2885

Ben Marsh                         MSEN       3162             02:19:19                  9350                    02:22:20            9846

 

These results may be subject to update but they are all available from The Cardiff Marathon Website, just follow the links.