So today was the surprise half marathon. My wife told me about it 3 days ago. So the only preparation I’ve done for it is this run challenge. Time to see whether the training has paid off.
It did. Brilliantly. My first km was my slowest & the only km I did over 8 minutes. That was the nervousness of the start, the usual starting line jostling & the first 500 metres were a reasonably steep uphill.
As I said on Friday, my plan was to run the first 15 km at heart rate, as if I were doing a longer version of this challenge, then see how I was feeling. I haven’t done any long runs since my marathon in August (it’s now October) so I really had no idea how I’d go.
For the first 30 minutes (which counts towards this run challenge) I ran 3.79 km at an average heart rate of 151 bpm, average pace of 7:55 mins/km.
The great thing was that I got faster as the race went on, even while I was staying within my aerobic heart rate. After the first 8:07 minute km, I thought “this is going to be a long day”, but it was great.
I even took a photo & posted it to facebook, then called my wife and my mum just coz it was funny.
At around the 13km mark we merged with the marathoners, I was feeling good, so I turned off the heart rate alarm & ran by feel. I was doing around 6:45 minute splits at a heart rate of low 160s til the 18 km mark. That’s when I turned it up a little.
With just over 1 km to go, starting with a steep climb, I let it all out and ran 5:44 for km 21. That’s when we got inside the MCG (the home of sport in Australia) and did a lap on the ground where so much sporting history has happened. Just kept going harder & harder (was at the point of thinking I’d gone too hard too early, which is when you know you got it right lol), then with 50 metres to go saw a girl come up next to me, I said “race ya” and we took off at a full sprint. Not sure if I’ve ever run that fast and almost bent double afterwards, but totally worth it. I won that mini race by the way lol.
Did the whole thing in my Dunlop Volleys, so those that criticised me for not wearing “proper shoes” can go jump 🙂
Ended up running the Melbourne Half Marathon in a Personal Record time of 2:36:24, at an average pace of 7:22 mins/km, average heart rate of 157 bpm.
My max heart rate, which came during that sprint, was a whopping 187 bpm. May have gotten higher if I hadn’t stopped my watch at the finish line (there’s always a delay).