My diary: I ran two half marathons in 7 days

Naomi White, a health and fitness PR expert, ran her first ever half marathon in Ealing, then she followed it with another half marathon in Bournemouth a week later. Here she tells us all about half marathon number one, in Ealing, west London on 27 September.

‘The ‘Ealing half’ is said to be one of the UK’s best half marathons, so I jumped at the chance to run it. And it was going to be my first ever half marathon (having only ever run 15K), so I was slightly apprehensive signing up with just two weeks’ notice, but I was up for the challenge.

I took part with my trainer and friend, Harry Jameson who I’ve run with before, and we agreed if we lost each other we would meet at the end to celebrate. When we arrived at Ealing Broadway station it was awash with runners – everyone from nervous beginners to clear athletes who were going to smash their PBs that day! I was quite nervous but felt it would be over before I knew it, so the only thing to do was to take it in my stride and enjoy the experience.

In the main arena we met the lovely Carole who took our bags into the press tent and offered us food and water, but we’d already ran out of time, naturally! So we ran over to the start line, which was a nice warm up, but soon realised we were stuck in the ‘two hour 15 minutes’ pen and I knew I wanted to finish below two hours, so we weaved through and reached the ‘two hours’ pen. I set up ‘Map my run’, so I could measure my ‘split’ times and keep motivated, hit the play button on my ‘Marathon playlist’ and off we went.

The pack we were in got off to a speedy start, which I am quite thankful for as it set the pace for the rest of the event. Winding in and out of the streets of west London, it was surprisingly scenic. The route was very well-executed and we didn’t reach any bottlenecks – to my relief. We were running at a pace of four minutes 50 seconds per Kilometre, which I knew was more than enough to finish in time, but I didn’t want to tire myself out. Coming up to the midway point we struck a hill (who knew London had hills?) and a pretty steep one at that! By this point I really needed an extra push and that’s where Harry really helped, we spurred each other on and if I can recommend one thing it’s running with a friend, you don’t have to chat but it makes a world of difference.

Coming into 15K the struggle was pretty real. My hips started to ache, but I knew I just needed to keep going. I can run 5K in 24mins, so potentially it was 30 minutes of my life and then it was all over. The crowds towards the final 2K were amazing; the local support was really encouraging and families had come out to the streets with jelly babies and oranges to keep us all going.

When the final road was in sight I couldn’t have been happier. I knew we were coming in at under two hours, I just didn’t know how much by, so I pulled everything I had left and picked up speed all the way through the finish line. Then I discovered we had smashed it – in one hour 47 minutes!

My first ever half marathon and I left feeling on top of the world, beating every personal best time I had ever achieved. After that I enjoyed a well-deserved Franco Manca pizza!’