It has been almost exactly four years, since I ran my Half Marathon PR.  Interestingly, it was the last time I actually raced an open Half Marathon. I now have an additional four years of training under my belt.  Will that training allow me to beat that PR time?

To counter the extra training I have done however, I am also four years older.  I am an older athlete, that came to endurance sports late in life. Despite this, I still believe that I can get faster.  Am I faster today, than I was four years ago?

I was hoping to run the exact same race to try and answer that question.  Unfortunately, the 2021 Just A Short Run race, has been moved to the Fall due to the pandemic. 

This means that instead, I will just have to create my own solo Half Marathon event. So this Sunday, I will attempt to run a Half Marathon faster than I have ever run one before. 

I am not going to run the exact route of the Just A Short Run course.  There is one hilly section, with lots of blind corners. This section is a little too risky for me to run, given the speed the cars drive on those roads.  Instead, I will do an out and back for 3.2 miles and then run twice around the five mile lake loop.  This will give me a total of 13.2 miles, to make sure I cover the Half Marathon distance.

Even if I do run faster than I did in 2017, I will not claim it as a Half Marathon PR. This is because I am not actually doing a race.  To me, PR’s need to happen in a race.  What I do hope to find out however, is… have I gotten faster in the past four years?