Half a half marathon

This evening I took to the streets of Tonbridge again to continue my quest to complete the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon with two dodgy knees and a significant amount of Christmas pudding still left around my waist!

Tonbridge was as Tonbridge is on a Friday evening: busy. The first couple of kilometers were spent avoiding people, waiting for traffic lights to change, and trying to see the pavement where Tonbridge and Malling Borough council have deemed effective maintenance of street lamps a low priority. They also seem to have some bizarre policy of turning the street lamps on and off at random intervals. One moment you're running on a reasonably well lit pavement and the next you're plunged into darkness.

I'd also like to mention the state of the pavements! It seems that the majority of them have been dug up multiple times by many different utility companies only for the tarmac to be filled in by an elite squad of three year old children with buckets and spades. I know things are tight at the moment, but please TMBC sort it out!

So, how did the run go? In summary: it was quite enjoyable. I kept the pace slow and careful as my right knee is still an issue, but I made it round in a few seconds over an hour which puts me on two hour pace for the half marathon.

To put things into perspective: I used to run 10km in 44 minutes and run half marathons in an hour and 40 minutes. I'm losing loads of time on the downhill sections of my runs for fear of damaging my knees further, and I'm a lot less fit than I was two years ago. However: the aim this year is to finish and raise much needed money for The PSP Association; on the subject of which my fund raising went from £0 to £415 today. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated, and those who have it in their plans to do so.

I had a mixed response to the live broadcast this evening: some thought it was great and were able to follow me without a problem, for others the technology did not work so well. I have two theories about how to improve this: firstly I'm going to turn off WIFI on my phone so it stops trying to hook up to wireless networks, and just relies on phone signals; secondly I would urge you to use the link on Facebook to view my running activities. If you're not a friend on Facebook, just send me a request.

If you did happen to follow me on line, please let me know how it worked for you. You can leave a comment on this blog or send me an email.

Finally: if you did miss my run you can always take a look at the route and the statistics by using the following link:-

http://runkeeper.com/user/grahamtutt/activity/68261583

My thanks again for your support. Let me know if you would like me to talk about any specific topics in this blog as I'm more than happy to do so.

Until next time: Nanoo Nanoo