Internal Half and more

A very early start for Sunday due to a few things I had to do as part of organising the race. Gloomy skies, on and off drizzle and cooler temperatures were the go, an amazing difference from the furnace like conditions a week ago at Fitzroy Falls.

This Striders only race is a Half Marathon but with a handicap start with the goal (for me as handicaper) to have everyone finish at exactly the same time. But there are always people either faster or slower than documented form.

I had a handicap of 94, mainly based upon my SMH time with a difficulty scaling factor for the "tougher" Lane Cove course. As it turned out my only start line companion was Silver Fox but he was running with the pram. My initial goal was to go out fairly hard and see how long I could hold the tempo. I started hauling in the 95 group and had caught them all by halfway up the rangers hut hill the first time.

5km split of 22:03 (4:25 min/km)

Anthony W stayed with me up the hill but then I kept the pressure going on the downhill and he drifted back a little. The run back to the start area was pretty fast and I picked up quite a few more runners along here.

10km time of 43:24 which gives a 5km split of 21:21 (4:16 min/km)

Back up the course and Scribbly's felt a little harder the second time, caught quite a few people on the climb up to the rangers hut again but the legs were certainly hurting a bit now and still had Anthony W lurking back about 20-30m

15km time of 1:04:45 which gives a 5km split of 21:21 again (very consistent!)

Now the downhill run home and I just focussed on form and trying to hold off anyone who might be catching me. Hauled in Johnny Dark and a strong Redback along here.

20km time of 1:26:47 which gives 5km split of 22:02 (4:24 min/km)

As you can see the legs started to fade and Anthony and another runner I passed at about 19km hauled me in at 1km to go. I tried to hang on to them but just could not hold the pace.

Finish time was 91:31 which gives an average pace of 4:20 with an average HR of 174.

Very happy to post this time, just outside my SMH run, but I did not run a marathon the week before SMH! The legs pulled up pretty well Sunday afternoon and I was contemplating heading out for another run but stayed on the lounge until the thought passed!

Tuesday
Probably 2-3 too many glasses of red last night celebrating my sister in law's birthday and so I felt a bit ordinary in mind, spirit and even the legs were not that keen to get going this morning. So in my wisdom I trotted around to my hill rep route, surprisingly it has been about a month since my last hill rep session.

The first rep was maybe just a tad too fast but I ground out the 10 reps and was also pleasantly surprised once I downloaded the splits to see today's average was actually marginally quicker than my last session as I felt pretty rough through the run, not helped but what seemed a warmer day as well! Also sliced quite a bit (ie 5 seconds on average) off my recovery run back down the hill between reps!

Stats
10 reps, average 1:28.9 with average recovery of 1:44

Summer Series tomorrow night at Drummoyne so should be a pretty fast course, but I'll also slip in a recovery run tomorrow morning. In aother news my GNW 100k entry has been accepted so no backing out now, in fact will do a recon session on Saturday over part of the course.