Some days, knots burst. Not often, but occasionally. Such was the case in Northern Ireland, where Natalie and I competed in the Antrim Coast Half Marathon in Larne and became part of a world record race. Larne? World record? Yes, indeed Yalemzerf Yehualaw from Ethiopia managed to better the women's world record on the Northern Ireland coast. Impressive, especially when you consider that the first third of the race was still quite undulating and not exactly reminiscent of a world record course.

Undulating or not, on our second short trip to Northern Ireland we wanted to attack nothing less than our half marathon best times. 1:22:01 hours and 1:13:27 hours respectively were the times to beat. While Natalie ran her best time at the 2018 Great Scottish Run in Glasgow and came close to beating it this spring at the elite marathon near Chester, I had run my time at the 2019 Scottish Half on the outskirts of Edinburgh. On that occasion, although I had improved my best time by around a minute and a half, I was well aware afterwards that if I had put in a performance like I had just before at the Scottish 10K Championships in Stirling, it might have been a second or two quicker. But you don't always have very, very good days, so at that time I was just happy to have a good to very good day and a new best time.

Two years later, the time had come to attack this time. After a fast first half, I was able to improve on the second half and finish in 1:11:58 hours, once again running about one and a half minutes faster than ever before. Natalie had a similar experience, finishing in 1:20:44, which was well below her old half marathon best. Both of us realised during the race that today is a day when one or the other knot could burst. Best time days are knot bursting days, days with clear best times even more so!