Third race in 8 days, I really want to go back in some decent shape and I will try to use racing to ramp up my mileage and speed. My goal #1 for today HM is to go out comfortably hard hoping to finish in 1:35 and feeling "fresh" at the end, goal #2 would be finishing with the same time and feeling wasted at the end, #3 finishing under 1:40 feeling whatever and last goal finishing under 1:45. For a quick description of this race you can read my last year report.
Like last year it was warm at 9:00 am but the anticipated start at 9:30 should make things a little bit easier. This race is constantly growing, this morning there were 1100 people to squeeze in a two lane road, if the number of runners keeps going up they have to make some adjustment to the starting line.We started 5 minutes late, the first km was crowded, but after that I was able to run my own pace. First km was 4:44, second one 4:38, third 4:31 (my target pace was 4:30/km) but for sure 4:30 was a little bit too ambitious for my current fitness level and I really didn't want to finish wasted with a 1:35, so I adjusted to the idea of keeping a 4:38/km for the rest of the race especially during the second half that is hillier and in full sun. I crossed the timing mat at km 10 in 45:43 (4:35/km) after a couple of kms I entered the slower part of the race with some hills, in this section I manage to keep my pace steady and I started passing people slowing down. I really pushed the last 2km (4:20 e 4:13) to finish under 1:37:30, my final time was 1:37:05 (4:36/km). This is my second slowest HM, just by 2 seconds, but I am happy because even if I missed my #1 goal I was feeling somehow "fresh" at the end. I walked 2km to my car, went home, mowed the lawn, took a shower, had lunch with my family and then fell asleep. I was woke up at 3:30pm by a huge thunderstorm that dumped lots of needed water on my garden and at 5 pm when the sun was back again I went to the lake for a slow run to finish 20 miles for the day. After a few slow miles at the beginning I started going progressively faster and finished 7 miles with a couple of kms at HM pace. Overall I am happy about my mileage and speed, still lots of work to do. Pain in the calcaneal area is still there tonight, but not worse than other days, a great day.
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