SMH Half Marathon

This race books up within a few days of entries opening every year, so of course I jumped on it this year, not wanting to miss out. Figuring it was 6 weeks after Ironman I thought I'd be ok.

What I didn't bet on was the effect the 4 week holiday would have on me in terms of doing no strenuous exercise, eating and drinking like crazy and losing all my fitness!

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I considered this race throughout the preceding week. Would I even be able to make it 21km? Should I try to go fairly fast, or would that cause me an injury and make me drop out before the end. Should I not do it at all?

But it's such a fun race and it's so good doing a Sydney running event where I'm going to know so many people running to be able to chat to, so the decision was to do it, and try to get somewhere between 90 and 100 minutes.

Last years time (off pretty good training for the Canberra Marathon) was 83:15 and a PB for me, so I figured adding another 15 minutes off no fast training might be do-able.

Absolutely cracking sunny Sydney morning and perfect running weather greeted me as I met with Chris O and Robin at Kiribilli to jog over the bridge to the start. Lining up with those guys as well as James Roger - all of whom were planning to do around 90-93 minutes, I thought "This is good. Just stick with these guys for as long as you can and drop off when you need to."

So I took my pace mark off James and we ran together chatting up until after the Mrs Macquarie's Chair turnaround when he was pushing just a bit hard for my liking and my little legs started to feel quite sore and refused to go at that pace. I let him go and didn't spot him again. Robin was off as well, but I still could see Chris who was about 50 metres ahead.

I thought "I'm going to try to keep him in sight and get up so I can run with him if possible. He's planned for 93mins and I'd love to do that". So for the next 10km or so I slogged on. My HR was high, but not abnormally so. My thighs felt like mincemeat and I just couldn't get any closer to Chris. I kept doing little surges and then not being able to maintain the pace and slowing again. Finally he stopped to drink a cup of water under the bridge and I managed to come alongside him... until Hunter Street where he surged away again!

At this point I was thinking "It's a glorious day, I'm not running easily, but I don't feel too bad and I know I'll make it to the end at this pace" so I was happy to go. I caught Chris at the Mrs Macquaries Chair drink stop and we ran to the line pretty much together - except for a shoelace blowout on his part, and some bastard passing me and ankle-tapping me so I almost gave myself a concrete facial - to finish in 96 minutes on the dot.

Saw heaps of guys I knew after - Ben, Greg, Christian, Clem, James. As well as catching up with Mark, Andrew, Kathryn, Bruce and their son Charlie, all of whom had a cracker of a race!

STATS:

Finish time 1:35:35 (net)
Average Heart Rate - 165 (max 184)

The splits (by my watch):
5km - 22:59 (av HR 154)
10km - 22:35 (167)
15km - 22:36 (166)
20km - 23:11 (169)
The final km - 4:37 (178)

Th splits (results website):
1st 10km - 45:09
2nd 10km - 45:50
Last 1.1km - 4:36