Sobrasada 2015

This is a quirky race involving 15 laps around the beautiful village of Santa Gertrudis to make up an official half marathon distance. Ok, so that doesn’t sound so unusual you might think…The race is mainly run by relay teams of two or more runners each running a number of laps before they have to swap the timing chip to the next runner in the team. Now imagine this race being run in the evening at the end of November and now it is starting to seem like something a little different maybe? The race starts after a series of children’s races have taken place, each of the 15 laps passes through the centre of the village where people are out in numbers supporting their buddies. The atmosphere is amazing and quite unique amongst any races I have previously run.
This year I was not part of a team and intended to use the race as a pb attempt at the half marathon distance post Les Templiers considering I felt in decent shape. Training had gone well, as well as road training can go I guess. My new treadmill was an invaluable part of my training regime, more so as I am the most useless person on earth when it comes to pacing.

On race day Harvey and Jemima were once again engulfed by race day nerves and finished way below what they are capable of. One day I’m hoping they will have a Eureka moment and realise they are both super talented runners.

Waiting for the children to fly around the corner!

The half marathon setoff in typical Ibiza chaos style, it wouldn’t be fun if everyone knew what was going on and race starts were actually organised! I settled into near 8min mile pace, first one clocking under 8 minutes which worried me as I felt bloody amazing and should have been struggling slightly at that pace. The buzz around the coursed was awesome, people coming out from their homes to clap, cheer and pity the runners around the track. Each time through the village centre was unique and amazing to see the children to give me high fives telling me I was doing well.

My loyal supporters high fived me on every lap.

At one point I was passed by the Amazonian goddess, I tried to keep up for a few hundred yards for obvious reasons but she is way too quick. My pace slowed gradually from halfway, the final two laps were painful reminders that half marathons do hurt when you put the pedal down.
The race culminated in a personal best of 1:48:07 beating my 2013 Barcelona time of 1:51:06 by almost three minutes. This was a significant result as up until this race, the year had largely been a washout from a race results pov.

PB in the bag smug look.

In summary, if I could recommend one single race to a race tourist to Ibiza it would be the Sobrasada, it’s so much fun my brief write up comes nowhere near close to doing the race full justice. Maybe I will see you there in 2016 🙂