Farnborough Half 2025
By Tony Newton (with a little help from his friends Debbie, Sophie and Laura)
If you were to look up the Farnborough half online you would see that it is often described as a “fast, flat course”-those of us who live locally know that this is a bit of an exaggeration (who doesn’t enjoy a bit of undulation?) but this doesn’t stop us from loving this race!
On Sunday 9th February 2025, the roads around Farnborough were visited by a record breaking number of FTRC runners, many dressed in the iconic black and pink kit we all love to spot! All in all we had 37 runners toe the line and an amazing number of supporters dotted around the course!
The website advised that the course was the same as the year before, but we had been informed that this had changed by our very own Sam W who was marshalling on the course (thank goodness we had someone on the inside!). This change would be between miles 7-9 where the course should have gone back past the start of Rushmoor parkrun (a famously long slog) but it went up and back on Laffan’s road around by the army golf course. Whilst many of us were familiar with this road, the change certainly didn’t help settle any pre-race nerves!
My race day goal was for me to learn from my mistakes last year and not set off too quickly at the start! As I walked to meet the others from the club, I had in mind that I wanted to run consistently around the 10 minute mile pace so I could hit around 2 hrs 10 which would be a 4 min pb from the previous year. I went off and started running with Sarah and Kathryn and very quickly recognised that I going faster than expected. I focussed on trying to slow myself down to the target pace but as the miles ticked off I found I was still going at the faster pace and mentally began to think I’d hit the wall around mile 10! However, the support on the course and encouragement from the fellow FTRC runners (including Sam who we saw twice!) made me push on to finish in a time of 2:04:29-almost a 10 minute PB! I later found out I was not the only person who had a fantastic race day experience!
As I mentioned, we had a lot of runners representing our club colours at this event, so we tried something new and conducted a survey of our finishers. 80% of our FTRC runners at the Farnborough half had given themselves a target time, and of those, 80% achieved their goals! 17 of our FTRC runners achieved PB’s, some by over 16 minutes and as a community we collectively PB’d by 1 hour and 43 minutes! We even had someone complete their first ever half marathon! Obviously, it’s not always PB’s and first timer glory in races like this, but we are proud at FTRC that our club comes together to support one another even if we haven’t had our best run.
Like I said- it’s not all about PB’s so let’s take a look at some of the other comments our runners had about the event.
“I was using it a as training race for a bigger goal and would recommend following a training plan”
“I loved seeing other runners from the club and the support on the course”
“My favourite bit was the whole race and I would encourage others to enjoy the race and run your own race. Don’t worry about everyone around you”
“I enjoyed posing for pictures with Sophie”
“I loved that you could see the planes take off whilst running”
“I loved the huge crowd support at the end and would recommend people take extra layers for the finish”
“I loved how the race was busy but not overwhelming”
So, did the race live up to it’s “chilly not hilly” tagline? Hmmm it was definitely quite cold (although still not as cold as 2023!), but I definitely felt like I encountered quite a few hills. Has that put me off returning next year? Not at all! The real question now is….will you be there too?
Once again, a huge congratulations to everyone who took part last weekend! I think it’s safe to say we have well and truly kicked off the 2025 season in style!
