Pre-Race Thoughts - Half Marathon

Well its now the night before by next race and I thought I'd quickly put down some thoughts.

I headed out to the course to register this morning with a friend of mine who is also doing the race. This will be his first half marathon - in fact it'll be his first race ever! He only started running after getting inspired by coming down and supporting me for Ironman New Zealand, he's now planning on doing his first half ironman next year with maybe a crack at the full distance in 2010.

While we were out there we drove arond the course (well most of it, part of the course is along a riverside track wich obviously we couldn't drive). The drive confirmed that the course is indeed very flat and looks fast. There's one sharp hill (every good run course needs a hill!) but its not very long. Its a two lap course so I'll get to head up that hill twice, I can't see it being to much of an issue though.

Five weeks ago I had high hopes of going sub 1 hour 30 minutes on this course, and todays course viewing showed that my hopes weren't unreasonable. Five weeks ago I was getting my splits down and sub 1.30 was on.

Then I got sick and couldn't run (or do anything) for two weeks. Since then I've been for a grand total of four runs and I'm not confident of going sub 1.45 let alone sub 1.30!

The plan now is to run the first half as strongly as possible and basically see how it goes. I figure one of two things will happen ... either I'll get a good tempo going and I just might surprise myself, or I'll blow to pieces on the second half and have a horrible time.

Watch this space ...