For this time, since I was expecting a narrow road at the beginning of the race, I squeezed myself a bit in front than before. I was just more than 10 rows in front of the starting line. This helps as I didn't feel like being blocked by anyone at the beginning of the race. In fact, after analyzing the running split, I found that I actually saved more than 1 minute for the 1st km as compare to last year HM (my fastest HM before this one!).
I found myself running at slightly less than 6 mins pace for the 1st km, which was good. I have then decided to slightly increase my pace to hopefully at 5:40min pace to meet my sub-2 goal. However, I didn't want to increase too much of my pace until I was too tired. I was just running by feel without constantly checking my pace. At every km, which my watch alert me, I checked my pace and my pace was around 5:50min, which I thought was good enough for the 1st half of the race.
After the 1st water station, around 7km, I decided to increase my pace to be less than 5:40min to make up for the slower pace earlier on. I then ran with the pace of 5:30min. I felt a tired with that pace but I knew that I would stop for water at around 10km and thus I just pushed myself a little bit.
At 10km, I stopped for water and I checked out my watch that my elapsed time was 57mins, 1 min slower than what I planned. So, I cut down the walking time and started to run again just after ~30 steps of walking. I just ran at controlled pace (comfortably hard, maybe) after the drink. I didn't check my pace because I knew that I couldn't go faster than this pace and shouldn't go slower than this pace either. I just want to hold on to this pace as much as I could to go for my best HM time.
I wasn't been able to hold this pace for long. I knew that if I were to meet the sub-2 goal, I would have to reach the 3rd U-turn before 1:30hr. Again, I pushed myself hard for not slow down until I reached the 3rd U-turn. Finally, when I reached the 3rd U-turn, and I checked my watch, it was 1:32hr, 2 mins slower than what I'd like to be.
I was a bit disappointed. However, I knew that I had really tried my best. I knew my problem was not trained long distant enough at target pace. I then realized that I had to train at target pace of 5:30mins instead of 5:40mins due to slightly longer distance in actual route than the calculated HM distance. Also, I have to at least run a few times at target pace for more than 15km during training.
Instead of giving up altogether, I was thinking that if I didn't try harder this time, it would be much harder next year due to my age. So, I pushed myself hard again! Until I had to stop for another time at around 17km! With the help of negative slope at 18km, I managed to picked up the pace a little bit. During that time, I just wished to improve from my last year timing instead of hitting the sub-2 goal!
After 18km, I was just running as hard as I could without thinking too much. I knew I wasn't been able to hit sub-2. Finally, at the last km, I was running the same pace as a lady runner. As woman HM started 15 mins later than man, I knew that she was running at faster than sub-2 pace to be able to catch up with me. The pacing worked as it turned out that I was running slightly faster than earlier!
Finally, I saw the finish line. To my surprise, the clock was showing 2:00:0x. I didn't expect to finish at 2 hours. So, I tried to speed up and it turned out that I was running at less than 5 mins pace for the last 500 m!
Overall, I am quite happy with the outcome, although I'd like it to be sub-2! My fueling strategy is right as I don't feel hungry and thirsty during the run, and didn't go to toilet too!
As I mentioned, I'd need to train harder at HM pace for longer distance. I just happened to talk to a 7th placing HM lady and she was logging 90km per week to be able to complete HM in 1:41hours! So, I have a long way to go.
Here's my results (top 2.4%):-
Fuel:-
1. 1 pack of instant noodle 2 hours before the race.
2. ~500ml of water 2 hours before the race.
3. Another ~100ml of water 1 hour before the race.
No comments:
Post a Comment