Lake Vyrnwy race

Quote: "‘talent’ is made, not born"  From the book Bounce by Matthew Syed. (http://www.matthewsyed.co.uk/biog/)

Today I did an amazement achievement, for me: A half marathon at Lake Vyrnwy in 1h11m39s.  This is a good time for any runner and one might say that I have a talent for running but after reading the above mentioned book, it's not talent but:
- Effort  - Hard work  - Focussed training  - Persistence.

Most things can be achieved through the power of practice and often in our society praise is wrongly given for the so called 'gifted'.  Not enough praise is given, in my view, for hard work and effort.  People who are prepared to work hard are not scared of failing because they don't have to fear loosing their reputation of having a magic talent.  Failure is the learning curve on a road to success.

Lake Vyrnwy is beautiful

Enough of that!  Back to my race report.  I knew that there was a big hill at the start of the race and the wind was strong today so I started off conservatively.  But after the first three miles I noticed that my pace was fast but I was still feeling fresh.  I kept saying to myself, this is easy and I'm prepared for this.  I focussed as much as I could on being relaxed.  Between the start and up to 5 miles I was chasing a pack of around 5-10 runners.  I caught up to them at 5 miles and said, we're on for a 73minute time, then I stayed with them for 1 mile and drafted from the wind.  Then I noticed that they were not keeping to the pace I wanted: 5m30s so I decided to overtake them.  One person came with me and stuck with me until the last mile.  This was a great help and we spurred each other on.  We both agreed to try and catch the person in front and imagine that the road was downhill.  He said to me "use the downhill".  We kept to the 5m30s pace and caught the runner up at 11 miles.

In summary I did much better than I thought I could and I felt strong.  I feel I could have gone faster.