I managed to run my first half marathon yesterday at Windsor after starting running just over 6 months ago. Really pleased to have got through it - it was much harder than any of the training runs I did. Admittedly, I only trained up to approximately 18km so perhaps that's part of it. I think i'll have to start training longer distances more regularly.
Ended up with 2.08 so my target for my next one is to get closer to 2, and perhaps eventually one day under 2. Really pleased to have got through it and there's a massive sense of accomplishment after having struggled through 5/6/7/8/9/10km not that long ago.
Nice one, congrats on completing the distance. It's very satisfying to go from the shorter distances feeling like hard work to them becoming just stepping stones onto something longer.
It's interesting that you say you found it harder than the training runs you had done. I also earlier this month ran my first half and had the same experience, as did a work colleague who ran his first a week later. We both finished more than 5 minutes over our training run full distance times and felt completely finished by the end of it. We came to the conclusion the biggest difference between the training runs and the actual event were twofold but somewhat related
1) The crowds
2) The other runners
One of the things I find when on a long training run is after a while the running becomes automatic and my mind can wander onto other things without constantly being reminded by my body that it wants to stop. With the crowds around, and having to navigate other runners (particularly near the start whilst people fell into their natural pace) there was a constant reminder of what I was doing and I never got into that comfortable zone. I cramped up in the last couple of miles and was so winded I had to walk for a good 5 minutes or so to recover. I was so disappointed in my time that I actually went out the next weekend and ran another one on my own just to see what would happen and I came in more than 10 minutes under my competitive time for a similar course, felt like I still had more to give and heart rate nearly 10bpm under on average!
I'm not sure whether that's it, only time will tell but I do intend to do a few more over the next year so I can find out for sure, as well as signing up to do the same one again in year's time so I can do a like-for-like comparison.