Monday, 24 September 2007

Sydney Half Marathon



Hurrah!

Yesterday was incredible, such a fantastic morning. The Blackmores Sydney Half Marathon was the first ever half marathon I've ever done (and now that I think about it, still the only organised half marathon I've ever done) so it holds a special place for me. It's the defining event that really got me into running and made me finally think "I am a runner".

It's also in my opinion one of the most beautiful and interesting city courses AND it starts 2 minutes from my front door, so I'm a little biased!

This is the third time I've run it and this year I decided I wanted to not only beat my previous time of [ ], but also get under 85 minutes which effectively meant holding 4 minute kilometre pace for the entire race.

As mentioned in previous posts the problem was that I haven't done any half marathon specific training at all. In fact I've barely done any running since the marathon in July - I took a month off then did a couple of two hour runs and 2 or 3 half arsed Pain in the Domain speed sessions over the last few weeks and that is all.

But I thought the marathon training from earlier in the year would have set a good base for me and so I'd go hard and try to maintain an even pace around 4min/km the whole run and see what I could do.



And it worked a treat! The morning was chilly (8 degrees apparently) when I did my warm up jog around Lavendar Bay to the start line, but I felt fresh and well tapered and rested and very confident of a good run. I grabbed a position near to the start line enough so I wouldn't be running over people, but not too close to the elites and it seemed about the right position because I was running alone for most of the race (ie not many people passing me, and me not passing many either)

I checked my watch every km and was running about 3.55min/kms for the first few over the harbour bridge and into Pyrmont. After a few km I was about 35 seconds faster than my goal time and I must have dropped back to 4min/kms because I maintained this gap for almost the whole run. Hit halfway at just over 40mins which was right on target for me.

I dropped about 20 seconds over a couple of kms around the 14km mark, but still stayed under the projected goal time, and went hard to get back to a 35 second advantage. There were a few lurkers passing me by now and I passed a few others who had dropped their pace, but it was very minor as the same faces had been running around each other almost the whole way. I was virtually all by myself for most of the race actually.

The new course avoided a few hills in the Rocks and instead looped around the wharves, under the bridge and hugged the waterfront around Circular Quay all the way to the Opera House finish line. Perfectly flat too and with 2km to go I just put in hard, but found that I couldn’t physically go any faster than the same pace I was going! My cardio was fine - I was still at 172 bpm from a max of 188 and breathing easily, but the legs just wouldn’t co-operate.

No matter, I knew at this stage that I would smash the 85 minute goal and probably get under 84 too so I was smiling widely and just enjoying trying to sprint it out! Over the line I went with 83.42 on the clock (and I knew it took me 9 seconds to cross the line so my net time was 83.33). Happy days!!!

The cool thing was getting to the recovery village at that time there was absolutely nobody around, it was eerie. Although I guess only 72 people had finished by that stage (out of around 3,600 just in the half). I grabbed water, chatted to the Blackmores people and then wandered back to the finish line to see Brad and Dan and Simon and anyone else I could find finish the race.

Eventually everyone took off home and I wandered down to find a spot to cheer on Sarah near the end of the 9km Bridge Run (which started a full 2 hours after the half). She did an amazing job, managing the run the entire race on no training and almost coming in under an hour which is fantastic! Then we went home and promptly fell asleep. Mmmm napping in the sun with the kitties.

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