25km today, 79.8kg
A beautiful morning, coolish with an expected top temperature of 18 degrees awaited, there was no wind and with a relatively fastish course (less the 7 U turns) I was hoping to day was the day where I would get one of my 2005 goals, sub 90 minutes.
Up at 5:15am so I could have breaky hours before the race, small bowl of porridge & a bottle of watered down Gatorade (50/50), showered and watched the news until 6:30 and then hopped into the car & sipped on another bottle of watered down gatorade with a small banana. I arrived and parked near the start line at 7:10, 50 minutes prior to the start, I picked up the Club notes from AV, registered with the Vic Masters for the O35 age group and then went for a 15 min easy warm up. 30 minutes prior to the start the entire team had arrived and I did some light stretching and was feeling very good. 15 minutes prior to dumped my bag into my car, I was ready with a light jacket to remain warm.
On the start line said hi to a few guys I have got to know quite well via CR, Fish, Jegster, Chris B, Old Miler & a few others, lots of best wishes. I looked behind me and noticed that a lot of people were behind me, strangely over the past year I have slowly moved myself further up the starting group, I used to start on the very back line. The group walked to the official start line and then bang, off we went, with most of the Western A' guys all starting together, 300m or so into the race Gary mentioned that we may have been going sub 85 pace (a slight stretch of the truth, but he got his point across), so a slight slow down was required, we hit the first k marker in 4:10 (I think). For what ever reason I had not decided to use my lap function for every km, in hindsight I wish I did, but I did note each lap time??? I was fortune it enough to have Gary (uncle) ran along side me for the majority of the race, which was great, someone to keep me in control, someone to chat with occasionally and to motivate me when it started to get tough.
For those who do not know this course, it is an approximate 6k + looped course, out & back = 3k ish and then the opposite direction out & back = 3k ish, meaning 7 laps of a sort. (probably didn't explain very well, oh well). Gary was calling out km times and I was taking lap times, from memory the first 10 k's were generally 4:14ish, some slightly faster & some slower, but generally consistent, I past the 10k marker in 41:45ish, which was pleasing. I was becoming confident of achieving my goal around the 15k mark, but at the same time it was becoming harder to continue on, with the lat 3k taking quite a long time and there was no big finish today, just a BIG smile when I crossed the line.
Lap Splits:
12:50
11:55
13:10
12:19
13:08
12:03
14:19
Total time: 1h 29m 47s
Obviously the 2 laps are different distances, but the course is accredited, as it was used for qualifying purposes for the World Half Marathon.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
5 comments:
Woohoo!! Congratulations Stu on a fantastic run and on achieving one of your goals for the year. Well done!
Jen
Fabulous effort Stu, it took me a while but I worked out what you meant in regards to the course. A great one for family to watch as they see you come past often and can really bolster the spirits.
So what's the next goal for 2005??
Good onya Stu well done on your "half"
time.
Very well done Stu, you've been putting in the training constantly for a good number of months now, and todays time was the result, sub 90 is fantastic, you will definitely smash 40 soon. Keep it up mate.
Congratulations on the great time Stu Mac....sometimes I feel a bit jealous of you ausrunners all getting to meet when running!
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