Great Bristol half marathon - 19th September 2021

Julie Casley buzzards member comments "I’ve never done this run before so I was very grateful to have won one of the 2 places donated to the Club by the Great Run team.
I decided to do the half marathon rather than the 10k as this was part of my tapering for the Virtual London Marathon in 2 weeks’ time. It was a very early get up and I was on the Orange
start, Wave 1 which set off at 9am but had to be in the pen from between 8-8:30am. The management of the event appeared to be very good and runners had to weave through barriers at the start to distance themselves from each other which worked well.

Just before mile 1 was the first of 2 decision points (the 2nd one was in the city between miles 12 and 13) where the half marathon and 10k courses took different routes. The half marathon runners went along the Portway and under the suspension bridge before turning at the 4 mile mark to head back into the city.

There were several motivational music zones along this relatively flat course. I finished in a time of 1:49:49 and was 2nd FV60. This was my first sub-1:50 half marathon since Barcelona in 2015 so was really pleased."