This is the traditional race opening the season, it is longer than an HM, it is slower as you can see in the altitude profile here and every year the start is in one of the three town. This year based on the altitude profile map we started from km 13 and went backward, with the big dive and climb right at the end. I met two of my running buddies at 8:00 am and we drove to the place. Temperatures were just sub-freezing but the sky was blue and no wind at all. We were forced to park a mile from the start and take a shuttle (it was actually better than last year). We reached the start with plenty of time and then we started fighting our way close to the start line. This year there were 2000 runners packed in a 4 meters wide road and we were probably half way without any way to go any closer. It took us almost a minute to get to the starting line but the mess was later when we started the passing game. My goal was to keep for the first half 4:15-4:20/k but the first 2k on a narrow road slightly uphill, packed with people, I did 4:51, 4:30, then I started going down to my target pace. I thought it would be easy to maintain that pace, but it was hard, we never done this race in this direction (usually it is in the opposite direction when we start from the other two towns) so I didn't have any reference for the pace. I got at the half way point and also the highest point of the race in good mental and physical conditions, from that point on the course is slightly downhill first and then a big drop before climbing back up to the finish line. I passed in this section many more people and crossed at the bottom of the downhill the HM mark in 1:28:5X. The last km back up was steep and brutal. I crossed the finish line in 1:35:52, that was a solid time. It is my unofficial CR. When I started I didn't know how I could honestly do, I trained hard and fast during the last two months, but I am still missing some mileage. Now I know I am on the right track and in a month I will have a legitimate chance to finish on a flatish HM in under 1:27.
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