That was my longest run ever and my second most elevation gained.<\/p>\n
My legs were so sore. What had I done? In theory it should have been an easy 30km mostly flat road run, instead I did a massively hilly trail run! But the company was worth it.<\/p>\n
I headed to the recovery centre on Monday seeking some relief, I attended my Tuesday night track session as usual with lead like legs. As I was sort of tapering for the half marathon I moved Wednesday\u2019s easy run to Thursday and got a massage, legs still sore, and rested on Friday and Saturday. There was also much foam rolling. They were still not 100% by the Saturday, but were feeling okay.<\/p>\n
Race day!<\/strong><\/p>\n Well the weather forecast wasn\u2019t the best, showers, hail and wind. On a beach side road, what could go wrong?<\/p>\n It was WINDY! I kept my warm gear on until 1 minute before the start. Then threw it to my biggest supporter (hi Maggie) and jogged into the starting crowd as the gun went off. Thankfully it wasn\u2019t raining. Yet.<\/p>\n I set off with the crowd, this is a much smaller run that the last event, something like 600 half marathon runners rather than 8000. My aim was to keep as close as possible to my goal pace. This was extra challenging with the strong buffeting headwind, especially on the hills. I kept checking my Garmin to try and keep to pace. It\u2019s very easy in the first 5km to go too fast while you\u2019re feeling good. I kept slowing just a little to keep on pace, then the wind would hit and it felt like you stopped mid stride.<\/p>\n I passed the 2:10 pacer in the first km, good, I can\u2019t be behind them! At about 5km I could see I was gaining slowly on what appeared to be pacers balloon in the distance. About then it rained, with the added bonus headwind the water slammed into my front. Nice.<\/p>\n At about 8km the course turned left and the wind stopped, that was such a relief. It took another 2km to catch the 2 hour pacer. I tagged on with him and his posse just as we hit the turnaround point at 10.5km.<\/p>\n The pacer, we\u2019ll call him Michael since that\u2019s what someone going the other way yelled at him, was great. He kept encouraging us, chatting, telling jokes as we ran. He\u2019s run a bit as it turned out, 15 Melbourne marathons I think he said at one point.<\/p>\n The course turned right shortly after that and the wind was still there, thankfully now a gusty tailwind. It was still raining at the same spot, a bit heavier and maybe with a bit of hail to keep it interesting.<\/p>\n As we passed 15km a few in the group started to surge past him. He called them back, telling all of us that surging at 15km is way too early. Unless you\u2019ve trained for it you won\u2019t be able to hold on for 6km until the finish. Some listened, some didn\u2019t. My plan was always to hold a steady pace until near the finish.<\/p>\n We slowed a little on the hills and picked up the pace just a little on the downhills. Michael guaranteed us a sub 2 hour finish if we stayed with him to the end. He would be keeping a steady pace all the way, no surges, and no sprints.<\/p>\n At 19km Michael told those that were left that if you\u2019ve got it, now is the time to go. Don\u2019t go crazy, but pick up the pace a bit and hold on for 2km. So I did, I lifted my pace from the 5:40min\/km we\u2019d be averaging to about 5:15min\/km. The pace wasn\u2019t a conscious decision; it\u2019s just what I figured I could do for the last 2km. I even managed a final surge for the last few hundred metres.<\/p>\n Time\u2026 1:58.17. Yes! Done! Happy!<\/p>\n I got back to the car just as the rain and hail really hit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This one seemed like a good idea, it was going to be a month after Run Melbourne and it would be in a lower km week of my marathon training. It\u2019s not a flat course, as it runs along Beach Rd which undulates a bit. I got a good months training in between Run Melbourne… Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.epicmac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/IMG_20170828_082309.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n