1:34

This is my time according to the official results, so I'll go with that (particularly given there was no timing mat at the start). Oddly enough, I pressed stop at exactly 21.1 km on my Garmin, which is pretty rad.

What a race! Awesome course. Freakin' hard course (as will be evident from the elevation profile in my previous post). All up, there is about 275 metres elevation gain/loss. Really well managed race, with friendly marshals everywhere. Lots of people got out to support too, which was choice.

I hadn't run a stand alone half marathon before, and this course made working out pacing even tougher. I decided to break the race up in three parts, and make sure I paced myself properly (which is easy enough with the Garmin). The first 8 k is undulating, with a few steepish, but short, climbs. I decided I'd aim to average about 4:30 mins/km for the first part (and hope to maintain something like that up the hill). I did exactly that until the start of Carter's Road (the main climb), and I made sure I had a good conversation with whomever I could along the way (to make sure I wasn't working too hard). I think I did that too well, and perhaps left myself with a bit much to do by the time the climb came.

I ran the climb well, and averaged about 5 mins/km for the 4 k climb. But that took my average pace down to about 4:39 mins/km, and the next few k's were undulating, so I couldn't pick up much pace.

I left myself go on the downhill, and just ran as hard as I could. I obviously gained a lot of time, but the constant, fast, running downhill hammered my legs. I couldn't push much at the end (normally I have a really big sprint), although I still passed a few people. I think this was partly because I paced myself well, and partly because my legs were mashed - I certainly wasn't overly fatigued at the end, just sore!

Apart from running the first part a bit slowly (which was better than running too fast), I paced really well. I passed people consistently throughout the race, and only 1 person passed me. Most people took off to quickly to start with, and I'm glad to have avoided that. I knew I'd beat most people uphill - what surprised me was that I bet most people downhill. People don't know how to let themselves go - although I haven't been specifically training downhills, having a naturally/trained high turnover helps a lot of the downhills.

I finished 35th out of 317 competitors, 31st out of the men. Pretty happy given how I'd been feeling during the week. For anyone who is interested, by AHR was 184, max 192, which indicates that the zones I have been working in have been about right (maybe a little low, but these rates will have been elevated because of the race).

I'll be interested to see how I do in Auckland on a (for the most part) flat course. I'll aim to pace similarly (effort wise), but will head off a little faster than this time. Kate's pretty good at picking how I'll do - she picked sub 1:35 here, and she thinks sub 1:28 for Auckland, which sounds about right.

Now, because I don't have photos, here are some interesting graphs:

Elevation:


Grade:


Heart Rate distribution (which indicates, apart from the early up and downhills, that I've increased my effort steadily, and there's been some heart rate drift):


And pace (I didn't quite take splits every k, but this gives a pretty good indication of how I paced myself):