As part of his New York City Marathon prep work, Barry Dolman took to the streets of London for an event that would see him pay a flying visit to four of the capital city’s eight Royal Parks. The one’s he’d be passing on route during the Royal Parks Half Marathon were Hyde Park, Green Park, St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens.

Loving a race in London, Barry was there for the Big Half the previous month where he recorded a terrific new PB of 1:22:22. He was also there for the Saucony London 10k over the summer for the third consecutive year clocking a time of 37:16 for that one. And he ran the Sri Chimnoy 5k in Battersea Park earlier in the summer, recording a time of 17:47.

The plan for the Royal Parks Half Marathon was to do it as a 20 mile run, with an easy seven miles before going into marathon pace for the duration of the Half Marathon.

Getting his elongated warm up run done as planned, Barry launched into the half marathon race at 6:28 pace. There was a hill at the start of the race though so his first mile was a tad slower. Getting through the first 5k in 20:32, his average pace for that came out at 6:37.

He then got through the second 5k in 20:03 which was 6:28 pace. After that he began to crank it up a notch, going through the next 5k in 19:51 which was an average pace of 6:24.

For the last three miles of the race he decided to up the ante a bit, posting a 6:17, followed by a 6:09 and then a 6:01. It was a really strong, progressive run from Barry, particularly as he’d already done seven miles before it so was actually finishing on 20 miles.

Completing the Half Marathon race in 1:23:51, Barry was over four minutes quicker than anyone else in the 55 to 59 age category. That was an encouraging result, even though he wasn’t racing it as he would a proper half marathon race. He’d finished 155th overall out of 16,202.

What the pointed to though was that he was in really good shape as he was running a fairly fast pace quite comfortably. That’s always a good sign. He’d completed the full 20 mile run in just under 2 hours 18 minutes.

The Royal Parks Half Marathon was won by Andrea Soffientini in a time of 1:09:53, with Paul Bailey taking second in 1:11:05 and Hugh Jennings finishing third in 1:11:27.

Alice Braham was first female in a time of 1:16:48 and she’s in the 45 to 49 category. Simona Cargnino was second female in 1:21:06, with Sophie Lomas finishing third lady in 1:21:20.

Managing to get through the training block unscathed this time round, Barry had been consistently clocking 80 mile weeks which was bound to have helped him build a considerable amount of endurance for his impending marathon.

Picking up an injury in the latter stages of his training, Barry didn’t quite get the result he wanted at the London Marathon in April and that was a shame as he’d been training very well up till that point.

Barry’s fastest marathon time yet is the 2:53:16 he managed at Sydney in September last year. That was the second sub 2:54 time he ran that year, proving that that is the sort of level he is at.

The New York City Marathon was a slightly hillier course so it was likely to be a tough to record his fastest time possible but with an excellent training block behind him, Barry had certainly put himself in a good position to have a chance of producing something special in the Big Apple.