Monday, December 8, 2014

Waterford Half Marathon 2014 Race Report

ts that time of year again, its time for the Waterford Half Marathon!

It may not feel like the flattest course in Ireland but for me I've always managed to set a personal best on the course so I always look forward to it, last year I knocked almost 4min off my personal best when I set a time of 1:34:43.

This year I was determined to finally get a sub 1:30 time, I knew it wasn't going to be easy and I knew going into it that my confidence had been knocked from my poor performance at the Dublin Marathon 2014 but since things are feeling better I was determined to give it my best shot.

So as always (before every race!) I was up earlier then I really needed to be and got myself ready for the race, unlike last year where I realized 40min before the start that I had gotten the time wrong this year I knew the start was at 10am and I arrived in plenty of time.

So I parked the car and headed to the start line, along the way I got chatting to various people including JP a fellow Portumna 100km finisher.

Once we were off there was a little congestion as we hit the first roundabout within the WIT campus grounds but things quickly improved once we hit the main road and I was holding with the 1.30min pacers. 

As with last year I found the hill climbing up the first mile to be tough (as starts go) but things evened off and things improved as we headed towards the industrial estate.

I’ll be honest, once we hit about mile 3 I think I got too confident as I was about 5-10sec out in front of the pacers. This is something I have an awful habit of doing and while I managed to keep this position right upto mile 10 I eventually had the pacers pass me at mile 10.

I did manage to keep them insight for another mile but I eventually lost sight of them, I had hoped that on the downhill from mile 12-13 that I might be able to catch them.    However, as I came to the top of mile 12 I couldn’t see the balloons anywhere in sight.

Still I upped the pace and kept going, as I approached the finish I gave it everything I had and managed to pass two people in the last 200 metres before the line after which I dropped to the ground the second I was through. My legs were done!

My finish time was 1:31:44


Overall the event was very well organised and was great to meet a number of familiar faces both before and after the event, while its not the sub 1.30 I really wanted its still a really nice improvement on last year to have.

Could have I got sub 1.30?  Maybe, maybe not. I’m still not sure......

While I do a lot of running and miles I’m crap for doing speed work even though anytime I have done speed work I’ve noticed improvements. I think I just find it hard to push the pace during speed sessions as I basically do 90% of my runs on my own. 

However, even without these speed sessions my half marathon times have been consistently dropping each year as my overall training pace and endurance has improved.

It’s gone from 1:56:48 in 2010 at my first half marathon to 1:41:06 in 2012 to 1:34:43 last year and now 1:31:44 this year.  So overall I’m still very happy with the improvements I’ve seen,.

Given I’ve never started a training plan specifically aimed at improving my half marathon times I’d be interested in what improvments such a training plan could bring in the future, maybe that’s something I might consider for the half marathon in December 2015.

Last weeks runs broke-down as:
- Monday: Rest
- Tuesday: 5miles @ 8:21min pace
- Wednesday: 5miles @ 8:05min pace
- Thursday: 2miles @ 8:21min pace
- Friday: Rest
- Saturday: Rest
- Sunday:13.18miles @ 6:58min pace

Weekly Total: 25 miles
Miles This Year: 1,881 miles

1 comment:

  1. Well done Barry. You should be focusing on the 26.2 i.m.o and do speed work sessions with a club. Maybe consult Pfitzinger and Douglas book?

    ReplyDelete