Newsflash - Solid Training and Speedwork Pay Off!!!

Well, after yesterday's junky 9.5k, I was a bit apprehensive about the internal half, which seems to be a good sign for me.

I went out for dinner with friends last night and had my traditional two stubbies of Cascade Premium, had a heap of water and basically ate myself stupid. Rose at 3:30am, had half a tin of creamed rice, a strong cup of coffee, back to bed, up again at 5:50, usual toilet ritual, and I was good to go at 6:15 for my 7:04 start.

The Striders' internal half is a handicap event, and there'd been a fair degree of toing and froing on this front. The first edition of marks saw me at 89 minutes, which given the harder course and two recent low 86 minute half marathons, I thought was fair - which I made the mistake of mentioning to the club president. That cost me three minutes, and more interestingly put me with a couple of Striders who'd recently run mid 82 minute halfs. I guess the theory was they'd tow me through to a quick one.

Things panned out a little differently as I lined up for the 86 minute mark and I was by myself! I had half a plan cobbled together of heading out at 4:05 pace for the first 10k and seeing what happened, and I was tempted to run that.

MPHaz and Vespachick went out in the group a minute in front of me and I thought I might set myself the goal of catching them and trying to hang off whoever proved to be the quicker. I reeled MPHaz at about the 6km mark, where I was rolling along just above 4:00 pace. I picked up Vespachick and Steve B who were running together just after the 10k mark, which I got through in 40 flat. I decided to run with them for a little, enjoying the chat, as I had a bit of a 'snowball' feeling through the 10k mark, that it was all going a bit fast, out of control and I was setting myself up for a disaster.

I started to leave them at about the 11km mark, and headed towards Scribblys. It was about here I started to see various Coolrunners out in front of me - O Runner, Blue Dog, Amjan, Gefjam, KevTiller and Mister G - and I think the feeling I was catching them on provided huge motivation. I caught all of them except O Runner, who ran a good PB today, and overran Blue Dog with about 1.5k to go.

Looking at my 5km splits through the race (and these are GPS splits, not Action's accurate ones, although my watch read 21.174 km, so no complaint for overall accuracy), I went:
1-5km - 20:24
5-10km - 19:53
10-15km - 19:26
15-20km - 19:20
20-21.174km - 4:25

Overall pace is 3:58.

I've kind of blown through a few medium term goals with this little effort today. I had been hoping to edge to a sub 4 minute pace half marathon, but I was more thinking the Sydney Marathon Clinic December half marathon. I would have been happy with 85:59, so to blow that so comprehensively into the weeds on a hilly course marked by an accredited measurer is thrilling.

To gain such results after a solid (not spectacular) six weeks work, and what basically boils down to four speed sessions is astounding. I found today that I could actually catch my breath at 4 minute km pace on the flat, which made recovery from the two big climbs at Lane Cove without losing pace much better.

I was thinking of dropping a speed session for a hill session in November - I'll be rethinking that. I need to get some input on what to do with my Saturday session. I've been having some doubts about the 3 x 5km 'tempo' session on Saturdays, so there might be an opportunity to shuffle something in there.

So, after getting all of my PBs in a degree of order, they're out of whack again. Today's time suggests a 10k time of mid to high 37s (my next goal) and a marathon of 2h55 or so - eep!

I also ran the half in my 'bargain basement' series VIII DS Trainers. Had absolutely no problems - I guess the lighter shoes do help.

Awesome - really wish I'd taken this up 10 years ago. Time to get serious.