My diary: I ran two half marathons in 7 days (part 2)


Naomi White, a health and fitness PR expert, ran her first ever half marathon in Ealing, then a week later she followed it with another half marathon in Bournemouth. Here she tells us all about the second one – in the sunny south coast resort of Bournemouth, on 3 October.

‘Here goes my second half marathon in the space of seven days. I know, I think I must be mad too! But I have been signed up to this one for months. Back in June, my mum and I decided we needed a challenge. Both into fitness and running, we had a look online and saw Bournemouth had a half marathon. Having had two close family friends suffering with cancer this year, we decided we wanted to run in aid of a charity, and experience just a little bit of the struggle they’ve been going through the past few months. And, of course, donate to such a worthy cause.

Bournemouth is where I grew up, so I was quite excited to run this route and luckily the weather was on our side. It’s an early start – getting up at 6am to fuel with porridge and banana to make it to the event in time for the 8am start. When we arrived it was quite busy; full of cars and supporters and quite a different feel to the previous half I had run. Bursting for a wee I headed over to the loo but soon realised I was running out of time – I never learn! The klaxon had gone and I was rushing to get to the start line, luckily we just caught the ‘two hour’ group, which I knew was perfect from my previous experience. Heading off, I promised my mum I would keep with her and pace the run, so this time I needed to run at a steady, controlled speed, which is harder than it sounds when you’re running slower than you normally do.

The first 5K was a little congested and we had to slow down quite a few times, which was frustrating for everyone as it was only the beginning, but once everyone got into their stride it separated. Running straight down to the seafront the views are amazing and definitely give you a little motivation, my only negative thought on the run was that we had to lap back on ourselves, which I never like doing. Reaching around 10K, I knew we needed to up our pace a little bit, so I gradually added a little speed and we were off, it was only around 15K where the struggle started to set in. My mum hadn’t run further than 16K, so I knew the next 5K would be the hardest.

The run takes you all the way to the seafront and you end up running alongside the beach, which was perfect as the weather was beautiful and this is where all the supporters had gathered to watch the race. There are two piers in Bournemouth and I knew the distance from one to the other and back again was 5k, once we hit there I knew we were well on our way to finishing. Heading back down from the first pier was where I needed to pull out full encouragement and keep my mum going. It’s not so easy when someone is shouting: ‘come on you can do it’ and you’re thinking ‘I hate you right now’.

We had 1K left and I kept thinking that we were only just going to make it in under two hours, so I grabbed my mum’s hand, told her: ‘we can do it’ and we ran all the way through the finish line together, hitting one hour 57 minutes – an amazing achievement for my mum – and I was over the moon to have been there sharing the experience!’