- 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.
