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.
I just wanted to say very well done to all who took part, I think that the times achieved by everyone are very impressive.