Adarq.org

- half marathon race in 1:34:38 (official), 1:33:53 (watch)
pretty disappointed. i set my pace to go out around 4:24 for the first 5 km and then drop down to 4:19 for the rest of the race until trying to go all-out the final km. that would have put me right at 1:31. i am just not even close to as fit as i thought, and in retrospect should have been less ambitious. in the event, only ran one split under 4:20 and never ran under 4:22 after km 10. was holding on for dear life for the last 8 km. less than a minute faster than the HM i did in march. bummer.

focus now turns to the ultra in december, which is a different sort of race. this was a wakeup call that if i want to run under 1:30, i need to switch up my training pretty substantially.

on the plus side, i felt like shit for basically the last 2/3 of the race and didn't quit, although there was a voice in my head telling me to do it. that's good. and i guess it's good to keep some perspective: i finished in the 94th percentile overall and 88th percentile for my demographic (men aged 30-39), with not very consistent training and not nearly enough speed and tempo work.

but damn, hard not to feel bad when i wanted <1:32, thought i had a real shot, and didn't even come close.

last night

- run 1:43:44, 16.02 km
pretty hot when we started out but actually kind of nice by the time we finished. not even a little bit tired by the end.

yesterday

- run 2:01:18, 19.19 km
pretty hot, this wasn't fun but also not particularly hard.

today

- hike up robertson mountain, ~12 km with about 650m of elevation gain, most of it in a ~2.4 km stretch where you gain 518m. pretty steep! lovely views at the top. we meant to hike up a different mountain but that one has gotten so popular that you need passes now. ended up being a blessing in disguise because it was like 96/36 degrees and the other mountain is a lot more exposed.

- tempo
-- warm up
-- 20, 15 @ just over HM pace (4:23 avg, 4:22 avg + 500m kick)
-- cool down
T+DI 150 but even more humid than it's been. this is supposed to be 20, 15, 10 mins but i cut it off early rather than overheat again. did manage to kick a bit at the end, so finished strong.

incidentally, after getting home i noticed that i now have some kind of rash on my leg. can't figure out what it would be from. i don't have any allergies that i know of, other than bee stings, and i don't remember scraping the inside of my thigh on anything. weird.

- run 43:16, 8.00 km
did a couple of strides right at the end. hilariously, the garmin clocked my max pace at 2:59/km, which is slower than an elite male marathoner's marathon pace. i know my peak speed was a little higher than that and the garmin is just taking an average but still, lol 

T+DI 158.

- hills
-- warm up
-- 4 x 2 mins hills w/jog down rest (4:12, 4:18, 4:10, 4:15)
-- cool down
awful, humidity smacked me (T+DI "only" 145 but it's all dew point) and the air quality is really bad today for whatever reason. meant to do six but was starting to feel a little sick to my stomach so i just stopped.

- run 52:22, 9.71 km
left knee allllllmost better.

lower left shin started hurting later in the day yesterday. that and the area behind my left knee are both still uncomfortable today, although not as bad. but needless to say, i'm not going to run today and probably not tomorrow either. frustrating since it's so nice here and the half is in just over a month, so i should be pushing right now.