The 2023 Robin Hood Half Marathon took place on the 29th September on a windy but relatively mild day. As one of the longest established city centre road events in the UK, the race takes a picturesque route along Victoria Embankment, River Trent, past Nottingham Castle, near the Robin Hood Statue, through the Nottingham Park Estate and through Wollaton Park where runners are bound to spot some deer roaming. The big finish is on the Victoria Embankment Recreation Ground next to the River Trent.
Grantham Running Club member Balint Beni lined up for the start with more than 5,000 runners for the second time, excited to try for a personal best.
The race started off well andheI was able to settle into a good pace. He ran with a group of other runners, who were all encouraging each other. The first mile was relatively flat and he was able to maintain his pace.
Later on, the course started to get a bit more hilly. Thankfully he had trained on the Drift so was prepared for this, but it was still tough and there was an inevitable slowing of the pace.
At mile 10, he started to feel a tired and the legs were starting to ache which slowed the pace more but he knew that he was close to the finish line and wasn’t going to give up. He crossed the finish line at a time of 01:49:01 and was happy to have finished, but was a little disappointed with his time, having hoped to run a sub-1:45:00 half marathon, but the wind and hills had made it just a little tough on the day.
However, this was still a PB to be proud of with hopefully more to come with training on achieving negative splits. Balint hopes to have another crack at sub 1:45 at the Great Eastern run in Peterborough in October.
Other GRC results:
Ian Burridge: 2:14:27
Tracy Webb: 2:27:25
Report by Balint Beni