Sunday, December 2, 2012

Waterford Half Marathon

My first race since Dublin City Marthon and I hadn't really put in the proper training for it, still I didn't want to miss the Waterford Half Marathon as its a nice route, well organised and isn't far from where I live.

Set my previous PB in Clonmel in August so the plan was to beat it by anything, luckily the Waterford Half had 1:40 pacers so the basic idea was to go out with them and see if I could stick with them.

This went well for the first 1-2 miles but then the crowd of people with the pacers started to annoy me (as usual) so I moved out in front of the pacers, all was going well until I realized they had changed the rest of the course and as such it was different from previous years...up till now I thought it was just the start/finish points had changed.   That'll teach me for not paying attention!.

The change in course meant that normally where there's a nice long down hill we now had to climb this, but on the plus side there was a few ups and downs after that allowing for the legs to recharge each time.

Spent most of the time thinking the 1:40 pacers were right behind me and it was only at the turnaround just after the 11mile mark that I saw I was a good health distance ahead of them so I had nothing to worry about.

Lost some time in the nature park just nearing the finish as it was twisty and had some small climbs that just appeared to take alot out of me but still managed to finish strong and pass a few people that had past me before the finish line.

Set a new personal best of 1:37:25 so very happy with that,

Garmin Log - Waterford Half Marathon
1:37:25, 7:25min pace