Sunday 6.30am Gold Coast Half Marathon 72m26 27th (1st M45)
Drove down from Brizzey with Geoff H and arrived in plenty of time for a slow warm up.
Knees felt OK after a while so was happy! The start was fairly tightly squashed in so when the gun went I wanted to get into clear space asap so really gunned it! I managed to get into the top ten! Aidan H running in full Superman outfit went flying past me! I think I would have gone through the first K in around 3 Mins! People still seemed to be going past me with ease as I tried to settle back into a sane pace, so much so that I was questioning my fitness!
3K was 9m25 which for me was pretty fast running, I didn't see the 5K mark but I past 6K in 19m20 which suggests I went though 5K in about 16mins, 8K was 26m10, and 10K was 32m55. That 10K was my fastest 10K all year and I had 11k to hang on! I was feeling OK but as we reached the turnaround we started running into a strong headwind. Runners were pretty spaced out so there was no shelter! A runner did come through and overtake me and I snuck in to take shelter. Funny thing was it felt like the guy overtook me and then seemed to slow down as I was having to cut my stride to stop myself running into him! The pace at this point felt very ordinary and I was regretting the lack of long runs in my build up! 32m55 had me believing I could run 70/71 but now I was not so sure! At other times (maybe out of the wind) the pace felt reasonable. I was convinced that I'd at least run sub 72, but in the end that just didn't happen.
The general consensus was that the wind affected times so I can console myself with running 13secs slower than Doomben was at least a comparable performance. I don't really know what to make of the extra training I put in for that 3 or 4 week spell, or with my knee concerns (did take pain killers in an effort to alleviate). On the drive back home my knees ached pretty badly.
The best thing about the race was I beat Tom H from Sydney! (73m09) [and most of the HuRTS Squad], and sadly for Tom, I shall of course, only run better at the City to Surf in August!!!!!!
Results are up - How good is that?
Race winner Michael Shelley 62m41, 2nd Lee Troop 62m57, 3rd Martin Dent 63m49.
1 comment:
Top run RS and good to catch up with you after the race - doesn't surprise me in the least that you were briefly in the top ten!!! Good to see you hung tough down the stretch. I spent the arvo doing a write-up for R4YL and in the course of my research checked Weatherzone to find that the winds were 20-30km/ph most of the day BUT peaked at 46km/ph around 7-7:30am when we half marathoners at the pointy end reached the exposed stretch!!! So chin up - it was a top run!!
Matt
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