Silverstone, however, included a few additional extras to test our endurance and pain thresholds!!

The drive up was really quite jovial with us all remarking on how lovely the blue skies looked; blissfully unaware of the weather conditions brewing outside!! Our banter focused on personal race tactics and strategies. Mark Louw and I had decided to run together, aiming for sub 1.50 with splits worked out for a 1.48 finish. Howard set his sights on a sub 1.25 and Angus was running his first half marathon.

Tim Carter and a new SAUK recruit Katie Burgess were also running. Our pre-race build up was taken care of by ‘in-car’ DJ (Howard) and we arrived at the course to the motivational sounds of Eminem Lose Yourself and The Chemical Brothers Exit Planet Dust.

Once outside we all gasped at the icy cold wind that greeted us, but were enthusiastically reminded by Mark “Success is the only mother-f***ing option. Failure's NOT” (Eminem) and with that we all set off for the start line …

Well, the weather man definitely threw us a freak show! We had gale force, sideways and head on arctic winds, a hail storm, some snow and a complete white out blizzard, all of which were interspersed with sunny skies … a race for all seasons! Whilst you might think this is more worthy of a ‘tough guy’ race weather report, I kid you not; this was just an ordinary Half Marathon around the Silverstone race course. I even have great wind burn (not sunburn) ‘tan’ lines from my new tri top..

Despite the universe trying its best to deter us from success we came out champions with PBs all round (and we all beat Nigel Mansell who completed in 2:53:24)!! Although I missed sub 1.50 by just 17sec I am very happy as I was placed in top 11% for my age group.

Congratulations to Howard for his 1h22 finish with a position of 41st overall (field of about 6,000 entrants).

Well done everyone!!

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