Cardiff Half Marathon

Grantham Running Club’s Andrew Pask joined nearly 25,000 other runners for his annual pilgrimage to the Welsh capital to compete in the Cardiff Half Marathon. The event now in its 15th year had the added kudos of being the inaugural Commonwealth Half Marathon Championships and has grown to become the 2nd most popular half marathon in the country, after the Great North Run.

Andrew, on good form going into the event, employed a ‘just run hard and don’t look at the watch’ strategy which clearly served him well. After a confident start, Andrew made the first 5k & 10K timing mats in 20:05 and 40:26 respectively; fast times which he was comfortably oblivious to. A sticky patch at around mile 10 was quickly overcome with Andrew now gaining confidence by passing other runners. Confident enough to have his first look at the watch at mile 12, where his average pace gave him the ultimate boost to push extra hard for the final mile.

Approaching the finish, he could see the race clock reading an unimaginable 1 hour 25 mins and with the seconds ticking away he sprinted the last 400m to secure a huge personal best time of 1:25:54. An impressive 2min PB improves on his previous best from 2014 (which he hadn’t even been close to beating) and moves him into GRC’s top 3 over the distance for the year.