North Shore City Half Marathon 15-07-07

Just a short post to report on how the North Shore City Half Marathon went.

I have to say that I’m absolutely over the moon with how the race went. I tend to set myself three goals whenever I race, or compete in an event. The first is a basic achievement goal (say finish the race, or in this case finish in under two hours) the next is a bit more of a challenge (finish in under 1 hour 50 min) and the third is the real challenge goal (which today was to finish in under 1 hour 45 min). Lately I’ve been pretty solidly running 5min or slightly under 5 min k’s, but not for any longer 15k’s.

Anyway I was really pleased with how I’d controlled my race. I’d stayed within my target heart rate zone and the few time I went over (mostly going up hill) I picked up on it fairly quickly and managed to being the heart rate back under control. Normally (like lots of guys) I have a tendency to go out to fast and fade towards the end of an event, today was different. I ran I slightly negative split (I think, I lost track of the k’s at the start and the half way point wasn’t very clear). But the real buzz was when I got to the 1 k to go marker.

Looking down at my watch it said 1.40.20 making 1.45 possible. However the last k was over a beach front (with pretty soft sand) so it was going to be close. So with renewed focused I sucked it up and largely maxed out my heart rate. I stopped my watch at 1.45.05, close enough for me.

So I’m pretty stoked, all in all a good training day.