Helensburgh Half Marathon

I ran my local half for the first time today. I intended to run mainly as a training run, but happy to go at a comfortable pace and see what happened. Starting off in the town centre, the course runs out past Rhu and Shandon, almost to Faslane where it passes under the main road and loops round to turn back to Helensburgh before moving off the shore road onto King St and a seemingly endless straight road that is also used in the 10k in May. Passing through the railway arches into Red gauntlet Rd and then down to the Main Road for the run back to the pierhead car park and the finish. There are a few small hills and, due to the heavy rain a few deep puddles to run through.
At the start I was very comfortable and ran with three clubmates for much of the first few miles, dropping off at Rhu and getting back to one of them when he stopped to stretch off a tight muscle. We had a wee battle that I lost after pushing too hard on the hill at Rhu to pass a few runners and my legs didn't recover. From mile 8 it was a struggle but I was still running as fast as I had in a half at any time before. I kept it steady from mile 9 to 11 reaching 11 in 1hr 25. However hard I tried to put in a finish I couldn't raise a gallop and started to feel the contents of my stomach wanting to make a re-appearance. I was pretty happy to see the finish line in the end. So happy I forgot to stop my watch. However it must have been about 1hr 42 or 43 as I loked at my watch after collecting my water and Mars and medal and it was stil showing 1.43 and something. That makes it my 2nd fastest ever 1/2M so I can't complain as my PB (1.41.46) was set, also in heavy rain, back in 2005 at Lochaber. It's certainly a supervet PB!!!! I'll update time when results are posted.