Monday, June 26, 2006

Harbour Capital Half Marathon

This year I ran the half marathon in Wellington. I had been planning to run the full marathon on this occasion but an injury early this year took me out of training for four weeks which was just enough to knock the training schedule too much.

Unlike last year, the day dawned fairly clear and rather still. Last year was very cold with a strong southerly which was horrible. I'd predicted that I'd do about 1:52 or so based on a rather disappointing 5km time trial performance at the beggining of the week.

This event has the rather useful feature of having pace groups. Experienced runners go out with a coloured balloon and attempt to get as close as they can to a fixed time. Last year I went out with the 1:40 pace group - I eventually dropped off but got 1:44:45. This year I went out with the 1:50 pace group. Perversely he went out at about 5 minutes/km instead of 5:12. We ended up about a minute ahead of time at the turnaround point.

Coming back through the second to last drink stop, at the corner of Cobham Drive and Evans Bay parade, the pack slowed down but I kept going to try and get ahead. That worked alright until about Point Jerningham where the pack came past me.

The last quarter was fairly tough but not as bad as last year. Basically a case of relaxing and trying to ignore the pain.

Finished off in 1:48:57 since I crossed the start line. 1:50:01 since the gun.

All in all I was fairly pleased. The best bit was having Cat at the end to lean on.