Royal Parks Half-Marathon Completed

After taking on the London Landmarks Half-Marathon earlier this year I set myself another challenge and that was to completed a second half-marathon before the end of the year. So I signed up as a charity fundraiser runner for Tommy’s so that I could run the Royal Parks Half-Marathon, which took place yesterday.

It was an early start as I had to be on a train into London at 6.30am. Other runners were also making the same journey so the train was quite busy for that time of day. Arriving into Victoria we all made our way up towards Hyde Park, where the race would start and finish, to drop off our bags and make final preparations ahead of our staggered start times.

I was starting in wave number 6 and we set off en-masse at 9.30am. As the name suggests, this half marathon takes in some of London’s beautiful green spaces as it winds through London, and as well as running through Green Park and St James’ Park, we get to enjoy the sights of Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey among other landmarks.

The second half of the route looped around Hyde Park and into Kensington Gardens and the spectators were out in large numbers enjoying the autumnal sunshine and cheering on all the runners.

As I got to around the 10-mile mark I suddenly started to develop a pain in my foot which slowed me down a bit. Up until this point I’d been making good time and was on track to finish in under two hours and fifteen minutes. But I struggled a bit in those last few miles and ended up with a finishing time of 2 hours 16 minutes. I’d missed my target by one minute but I had beaten my previous best, from the London Landmarks race, by twelve minutes! A reason to feel very happy indeed!

I’d also managed to raise another four hundred pounds for Tommy’s, breaking the £1,000 barrier from both races!