greenbelt half-marathon

Today I did the SARRC Greenbelt Half-Marathon. It was my first ever half-marathon (21km), I have only ever done 12km or 42km races. I often do about 15-20km training runs though.

I don’t know any of the results yet, but I was hoping for 88 minutes 30 seconds (based on a linear interpolation of how I went in the last City-to-Bay fun run (12km) and the Marathon up and coming in August which I’m aiming to do in 3 hours). I finished about 30 seconds faster than I was hoping, at 87 minutes something.

I was lucky enough to win a $130 voucher for Joggers World, which was really cool! Pity the store is burnt down though, so I can’t claim the voucher for a while.

I completely stuffed it up, and reckon I can do heaps better. I stuffed up because I’m inbetween heart rate monitors at the moment, so I don’t even have a stop-watch to wear during the run, so I couldn’t pace myself with heart rate or even time. There were distance-to-go markers every so often, and it seems I got confused with last years markers because when I got to the “2km to go” mark I sprinted hard for about 3km until I saw a sign that said 5km to go. Instant knife stabbing pain in my quads when you see a sign saying 5km to go after you just did a 3km sprint. I had to then wear out that pain for the last 5km. I reckon between the rain, hail, and not knowing how far to go at any stage during the event hence extremely bad pacing, I could possibly do it in 82 mins.

Assuming I pace myself out for a 90 minute half-marathon, I reckon I could keep that pace for two half-marathons in a row and therefore seem to be okay for getting a sub-3-hour marathon time for my second ever marathon coming up in August.