Palmy North Half Marathon

Well I have gone forth and achieved another PB! Woohoo! I do believe that every race I have done since Richard has been coaching me has been a PB! Crazy eh! Good crazy though :)

I flew up to Palmy on Sat am to stay with Geoff's brother Pete and his partner Jill. They were both planning on doing the half marathon as well, poor Pete tho he was really sick and after being up coughing all night Saturday night decided it wasn't such a smart thing to do. So it was down to the girls, although I did offer to wear his transponder for him but he wasn't keen, I have no idea why, except maybe cos he can run a 1.35 half marathon!

The weather in Palmy was pretty sucky to be honest, fair enough it was warmer than ChCh but it was bucketing with rain and a bit of hail just for good measure. I got taken on the grand sightseeing tour of Palmy which didn't take long but the windfarm was very impressive and well cool, check here for more info. Amazing to think that one of those turbines can power 900 homes!

After waking up at 2am, 4am and 6am to pelting rain I was seriously thinking about not racing, the weather was gross! As luck would have it by the time we were up having breakfast it was nice out, blue sky and everything! It held off until after the race started which was good as at least we got to start in dry weather! At about 15-16kms for me it got really nasty, it was a torrential rainpour and I was utterly soaked! Oh well, once you're out there its easy to keep going!

I decided that I was just going to treat the day like any other long run day in training so I kept things pretty normal, I'd had a normal training week and didn't really worry about carbo loading for the day. It meant things were pretty lowkey for a race and as Pete and Jill only lived 5mins from the start we turned up about 10mins before start time and were pretty much straight into it. My plan was to treat and keep my HR around the 155-160 mark as I knew I could maintain that for long periods of time while running. The first km was downhill so that was cool, although I was trying not to take off like everyone else as Pete had warned me that everyone overdoes that first km as it is downhill, not much point smashing yourself at the start of a half marathon eh!The first few kms rolled along quite nicely and as Pete wasn't racing he drove round the course taking photos and cheered us on which was cool. I was feeling pretty good at the 5km mark although I was aware that my HR was higher than I wanted it to be, I tried to get it to drop down but without much luck. Figured I would just keep trucking along and see what happened. At about the 6-7 km mark we came through a tunnel and started running along the river, at the top of the path here there was a lone bag-piper piping away! That was really cool! Stuff like that always makes me feel a bit emotional tho so had a wee sniff after I ran past. It was real pretty along this stretch, river on one side, trees etc on the other side. I did a PB of 58.22 to the 10km mark which was cool, they had someone calling out times at the half way mark and I did 61mins to halfway which is wicked but I also knew that I wouldn't be able to maintain that pace for the next 10.5kms! At about 8kms I was real hot and just couldn't get my breathing sorted with such a high HR so had dropped to a walk and stripped off a layer which I threw to Pete along with my cap when I saw him next. Richard was keen for me to negative split the race so that plan was now out the window, although I was confident that I would hit my goal time of 2.10 and even toyed with the idea of making it in 2.05! From halfway we headed out around the Awapuni Racecourse, wow that is a massive place! It seemed to take forever to get around there and kinda did my head in, I know that's kinda silly as 21.1km is 21.1km no matter where it goes! It just seemed to take forever to get around there! Still I was on the home stretch now and the route headed back the way we had come so I knew what the rest of the course was like which was good and meant I could just focus on getting home, and then it rained! And boy did it rain! I ended up running with my glasses in my hand, about now I regretted giving Pete my cap as it would have been real handy in the rain! Finish line was the same as the start, up at Massey Uni, so you guessed it... that nice downhill at the start was a nice uphill finish! Its not really much of a hill tho, it would be smaller and less steep than the Halswell Downs, it just hurts when it turns up 1km before the end of a race! The final 100m is on the flat tho so sprinted in where thankfully Pete was waiting with my jacket and a towel! Official results aren't up yet but I clocked in on my watch at 2.09.30 which is a PB by about 20mins and given the conditions on the day, the lack of taper and general prep I am pretty blimmin' happy with that!! Jill did a PB as well knocking a minute or so off her ChCh time, she even managed to get hard enough to throw up when she crossed the line! hehehe, I'm pleased I didn't get to see that!

And there is no rest for the wicked, I was back in the pool this morning! Only a 30min swim tho which was nice, I thought about checking out Jelly Park but couldn't be bothered driving that far so just headed to Centennial, also sat in the spa for a bit afterwards so feel quite good now :)