Lloyd Biddell

I entered the Great Birmingham Half Marathon with some trepidation several months ago.  Up to now the biggest event I'd ever entered was the Derby Ramathon that had 3,500 entrants.  By contrast today's race had circa 18,000 entrants so was on a completely different scale to anything I'd ever experienced.  In my mind I'd always viewed events such as these quite negatively so it was going to be interesting to see how the event compared to what I was expecting. My Derby Ramathon time was 75.16 so my main priority was to beat that time and come in under 75 minutes, if not a little quicker.  That said, I knew the course was going to be tough, lots of little undulations plus a 40 metre climb at mile 11. I got to the start about an hour before the off and frankly the weather was bucketing it down.  Eventually the rain eased off so at least all of the waiting before the start was going to be in the dry.  I had a number that meant I was classified as a 'Faster Paced Club

Since the Tamworth 5 mile my sesamoiditis has been flaring up again making it quite painful on the ball of my left foot.  In some ways a few rest days before the Tamworth 10k was not a bad thing but I hope it soon starts to improve otherwise its going to be hard to train effectively. Today was the Tamworth 10k and the 2015 edition was my first race back in the running world so it was always going to be interesting to see how I compared.  This time round I made sure that I had a good position at the start line and from the off I immediately settled into a fairly relaxed pace.  Straight away I was about 4th or 5th but well in touch with those in front who were just a couple of metres ahead. Just after the start.  I was about 4th or 5th at this point. After the first km I moved into 3rd and gradually the three of us pulled away from the rest of the field.  The first km was run in about 3.25 and I felt really relaxed; I decided not to go too fast and just stay behind the two ahead