10 Things I Think About The Wokingham Half Marathon 2026

1. Ankylosaurus

I think that the best races are the random races that are found after booking flights somewhere. An excellent Dinosaur Zoo with extra dinosaurs meant a trip to London for the midterm break. Wokingham Half Marathon happened to be on but it was sold out, luckily I just about had the elite entry time so not only could I enter it was free entry.

2. Satisfy Tracksmith Soar

I think that the London running fashion scene is interesting. Batterseat ParkRun was like a running fashion parade. None of the fashion mismatch catastrophes that you’d see down the Marina of a Sunday morning. Having been heavily influenced by million runners in the ParkRun the shops had to be visited, incredible boutiques, selling coffee (every shop in London sells coffee), with minimal stock. Hold onto your old race t-shirts, ones from the 80s were being sold for £100. I’m going to be a millionaire.

3. WHAM

I think that it would be great if WHAM were actually from Wokingham, I know nothing about Wokingham except that it is west of London and they shorten it to WHAM on the road markings coming off the M4. I was very lucky with the accommodation as when I looked there was one room left in the hotel where the race started and finished so I booked that.

4. Irish People = Party

I think that the Cantley Park Hotel where the race started was very nice, an old country house in a nice park near the town centre. We arrived at around 9pm the night before the race having spent too long looking at running fashion shops. At reception the man seemed about worried about our booking. He said that they thought we were with the party that was going on in the hotel so they had put in a room right beside the disco. He moved us to a room slightly further from the disco. You could still hear the disco but it was no problem as it was in England where people follow rules and by 12 there was zero noise. I don’t think they played any WHAM songs.

5. Breakfast Pickup

I think that all races should start and finish at a hotel. I don’t understand why it isn’t more of a thing. Runners are great customers for hotels, very easy. In the morning after a good sleep, it was very nice to collect the race number from the tent which was right outside the breakfast house. Very efficient. You could see the start line gantry from the breakfast room, a great job.

6. John Meadeing

I think that I’m getting better at doing what John Meade does so well, talking to absolute strangers about nothing at all. Normally what happens at races is that whoever I talk to before the race I end up running the whole race with afterwards. Sunday was no different. This time it was a fella wearing all soar kit but with a ciele hat who was wearing the same pumas as me. He had even gone so far as having lab tested them and found that they were the most efficient of the lot, even better than the Asics Metaspeed. I’m not as good at talking as John Meade so there was about three minutes of silence before the race started.

7. Pat The Mayo Bull

I think that the first mile of the race was very tough. It was slightly uphill. An uphill race start is very hard for the modern day runner used to perfect splits. 3:27 said my watch for the first kilometre. What will people think I thought? Then it went downhill and I passed a fella wearing a Pat The Mayo Bull singlet. He said he’s been in London for 16 years. I said I was just on holiday. Then I tried to get the watch looking more Strava pleasing, which I did because the course went downhill. 3:10, that’s more like it. I wished it was Seville or Barcelona.

8. Charleville

I think that the course was very like the Charleville Half marathon just with more humpback bridges. In between the bridges it was relatively flat with slight drags. Just like Charleville there were complete road closures, which is unusual and great. Marshals everywhere, even the fellas at my pace took time to thank the marshals.

9. Science vs Art

I think that the reason people like Seville and Barcelona half marathons is that you don’t need any course experience to run them well. They are effectively science experiments. The Wokingham half marathon course is more like a piece of art, running it before would be a great advantage as you’d know where the lumps, bumps and wind would be. I hadn’t a clue what came next, so I settled for the only thing I could do which was follow the soar fella I had been talking to at the start which worked fairly well.

10. 45th

I think that it’s great to be from Cork and not from the Greater London area. It must be very hard to get praise in London. I thought I did ok but I only finished 45th. There were loads of people ahead of me, loads of them. I’d never win a prize ever, not even as an old man. Not to worry, the excellence of having the race finish at a hotel soon took over. It so good to be able to walk 200m from the finish to the hotel room. All races should start and finish at hotels.