I was excited to do my first race in Canada and my goal was to run my personal best – under 1:15:20 which was 5 years ago in New Zealand when I had just started to run. In the last two years I have not been able to get under 1:18.00 It was nice to have a lower mileage week leading up to the half although not too much lower as my main race is the Ottawa Marathon – I have been averaging 100-105 miles per week since January in buildup for the Ottawa Marathon on the 31st of May. My legs were thanking me for the decrease in miles down to 80. Training has been going well and my body was feeling prepared to run.
The Montreal half marathon served as the Canadian Half Marathon Championships. It was great to meet the long distance runners in Canada and it was a good opportunity to ask about other races in Canada. A really nice bunch of people.
Race Strategy - Since finishing racing on the track in college I have had trouble to really push myself in races so my plan for the race was to push hard from the beginning and hold on as long as I could. I wanted to finish feeling that I had nothing left to give.
On the start line the weather conditions were not optimal for running as it was raining, 4 degrees and winds of 20km/hour however I was looking forward to racing and tried to forget about the weather conditions. The gun went off and I got out to a fast start like I had planned (3:20 average pace for the first 5km). I thought that the other girls would be with me but I found myself with a group of guys for the first 5km. I was a little worried when I heard one guy say ’16:45’ at the 5km split and hoped it wasn’t too fast but wanted to keep the pace up. However I dropped off the pace at the 6th km and hooked on with a group of 3 guys and stayed with them until kilometer 14. We went through the 10km in approx 34:10 (my 10km road personal best). At the 14th kilometer the 3 guys I was running with picked up the pace and by the 15th km I was running by myself which was bad as there was a very strong head wind and I found it hard to keep the pace and lost a lot of time. I ran the rest of the race by myself and this was a bad mistake as I never increased the pace again which I was frustrated about. I finished with a pb of 1:14:45 and won the race however I was disappointed as I did not give everything and push as hard as I wanted to in the last half of the race but a much better effort than the previous half marathons. A good steppingstone before the Ottawa Marathon.
Next Race – Sporting Life 10km in Toronto. We have not been to Toronto yet so it will be nice to travel to a new place and hopefully get a personal best in the 10km on the road.
2010 Race Schedule
April 2010 Sporting Life 10km – Toronto. Goal Time – Sub 34 minutes
May 2010 Ottawa Marathon – Ottawa. Goal Time – Sub 2:35
October Chicago Marathon – Chicago. Goal Time - Sub 2:32
No comments:
Post a Comment