Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Belated Forest City Shallonge Report

In brief: I won the shallonge against BJH and ran a personal best half marathon time of 2:06:33. I'm happy with my time, but a little disappointed that I missed 2:05 again.


Anners at 18 km


Long-winded: It hurt the whole way, and I was very surprised that I was able to maintain a 6:00/km pace. I started off at 6:00/km right away, which I don't normally do. I usually like to start conservatively. I took my first walk break between 7 and 8km, when I took my gel. My right shin was killing me (weird, because it's not usually a problem area). I was tired and thought I was DONE. How I kept going, I have no idea. After that, I walked through every water station and sipped some water. I took a 2nd gel around 15-16 km. At about 19.5 km, my right calf started cramping, and I thought, "OH NO, not NOW!!!" I managed to stay upright for the rest of the race and finished with a bit of a sprint.

My splits (according to SportTracks):
5:54
5:58
6:08
6:03
5:47
5:52
5:25
6:21 (long walk/gel break)
5:58
5:50
5:58
5:44
5:55
6:03
6:07
5:47
5:56
5:53
6:16
5:50
5:54
2:11 (0.43 km)

My garmin time was 2:07, so I'm not sure how I ended up with a 2:06:33 chip time. Oh well, I'll take it! 14/40 in my age category, which I was very surprised by, having looked at the previous year's results.

The course: Gorgeous. It was a beautiful sunny day, and part of the course was on bike paths. There were some small hills that kept it interesting. The race was relatively small (560 runners in the half, 228 in the full, plus 10k, 5k and 2.5k runners), and the organization and volunteers were great. I think I could really come to like smaller races.

So now...I haven't yet achieved my goal of breaking 2hrs in the half. Should I go on to do a full this fall, or should I put some serious effort into speedwork and take another shot at a 2hr half? Doing both would be difficult. Hmm...

2 comments:

Cliff said...

Belated congrats ;)..sweet stuff...

Kewl Nitrox said...

Congrats! Great run.