This is my 2nd Half Marathon since I started running and joining races around 2 years ago. As I put a lot more effort in injury prevention, my goal for this half marathon is not to have any kind of pain after the run.
As for my training, I initially wanted to run 21 km during training before the actual race. However, as always, I had to attend to other priority and not able to meet that goal during training. I just managed to log 17 km as the longest run before the race. This 17 km is slightly better than last year, in which my longest run was just around 14.5 km. However, the 14.5 km route that I was training on was a bit of hilly while this year's 17 km was on flat surface! Moreover, I didn't had any interval training this round but focus mainly on logging higher mileage. But, I joined more short distant race throughout the year thou.
Similar to last year, I had been drinking around 1.5 litre to 2 litre of water up to 1 hour before the race. Since I was kind of hungry before the race last year, I brought myself a piece of bread to be consumed 2 hours before the start. So, the bread solved my hunger problem this year. On top of that, I spent time to understand and plan my diet based on the materials (
Fuel for Runners) through the medical forum.
Nothing surprising at the beginning of the run. I was running with the pace that I was planning on. Although there were more participants this year, I didn't really feel the different during the beginning of the run. Maybe because I was not that far away from the starting line.
Since women category started the race 1/2 hour before, I started to see lady participants (walking and taking photos) around 7 km. At around 9 km, I felt that the road was more crowded as compare to last year. As I only had my drink after 10 km during my training, I did the same and walk for awhile after the drink. This time, I felt that my timing for 10 km split was a bit slower than last year. Thus, I kind of cut short my walking and started to run again. Although my target for this year was not on time, but when your emotion overtake your logic, not much thing you can do about it.
At around 12~13 km, I can really felt the crowd, especially more and more lady participants were walking. If my memory served me right, the road was quite empty at this distant during my last year run. But for this year, I had to maneuver around trying to keep to my constant pace.
I still remembered that I started to get tired after 14 km last year. I wasn't that tired at 14 km for this year but started to feel tired after 17 km. Now, I really think that long run training really helps. I was really struggling for the last 4 km for this time.
Finally, I finished the race with the timing of 2:09:23 which is slightly faster than last year, to my surprise. Well, the slight improvement was helped by cutting down my walking time at 10 km point!
Here's the results for this year.
The real improvement for this year to me is that I wasn't suffering that much after the run. I had difficulty walking up and down the stairs for 3 days after the run last year. But for this year, just half a day of difficulty and not as bad as last year.
For next year, I hope to be able to complete the race strong and no suffering at all after the run! That's the goal.
