Well it isn’t often that I get to my Blog straight after a race, but I thought I would get it out of my system before I forget how it all went yesterday.
First things first – I PB’ed. I ran the half in 1.41 and on THIS course that is 27 minutes faster than the time I ran in 2010. 27 minutes is a fair bit so I am happy with that amount of improvement in 2 years. In the bigger picture, I am really pleased that I can see that I am improving. My goal of 1.35 was a little ambitious on this course, BUT you need to have those stretch goals. I believe I am in close to 1.35 shape on a cool, flat road course....which this course wasn’t.
I will explain the course now, it is broken into 3 parts, about 3.5km of is exposed road running – quite large gravel (not smooth hot mix material) then there is 2km of “trail” which by the time I started to run on it, resembled the beach. It was very sandy and had a number of undulations. Then the final 1.5km is on compacted gravel – which is quite fast to run on. The course is 3 7km loops.
The trail part of the course really zapped me of any energy in my legs, and whilst I was running comfortably at 4.30 pace for the first 3.5km on the road the trail section and weaving in and out of runners, took its toll on my pace. I really noticed the huge difference in my exertion level through the sandy trail section, which by the 3rd lap it felt really HARD.
So for me, it was quite a difficult race. My energy felt quite low. I also had a tummy upset on race day. Without going into the details, I thought it was nerves but I had 6 trips to the toilet before the race started and about 8 post race.
How did I end up with a tummy bug? Saturday was my nephews 4th birthday and we had a great day at the Botanic Gardens, and whilst lunch involved a bit of “party food” dinner was a rushed affair and included hot chips and frozen food at Bel’s sisters house.
Seems like a very bad rookie error eating something very different to my normal pre-race, Subway lunch and pasta/thin pizza dinner. I am really regretting not planning my Saturday meals in advance. As I have been eating quite cleanly for the past couple of weeks, the high fat dinner really disrupted my body Sunday, to the point I had massive stomach cramps all Sunday night. Not good. Pre-race nutrition lesson reinforced.
So in adding all of those details up, very happy to PB considering the condition I was in and the course. Lawto, Jason and I finished 4th Men’s team and 5th team overall out of 42 teams.
Lawto swam like an animal – very impressive swim time, Jason rode unreal 2hrs 28minutes – he had a guy sitting on his wheel the whole 90km drafting off him!
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| HRE Loves HONEY SHOTZ |
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| Pre-Race Pex, Lawto, Cadel |
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| JP Pre-Race |
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| Lawto - post swim |
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| Jason smashing it |
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| Mid Race |
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| More running! |
In the other teams, Gav held off Paul “Tex” Tucker for the team win. Gav ran very impressively going 1.28 which is awesome on that course, Paul ran 1.19 not enough to catch Gav, Aiden in his first half marathon went under 1.35 – again I can’t stress how impressive those times are considering the course and running in the middle of the day. Also note – Paul did run at the Botanic to Bridge in the morning (8km) and drove the 90 minutes back to Yeppoon before he raced again at lunch!
It was so great to see heaps of local athletes out there smashing it up in the over the full 70.3 distance, Brendan “Big M” Motley went 5.21, Rodney smashed his PB he went 4.56 for, Raleigh Wallace smashed it with a 4.42. Very happy for these guys, hard worked payed off for them!!!
So I have a block of 8 weeks of training before the Toowoomba Half Marathon, a bit of a rest week this week then straight back into the speed work.
DO NOT forget to register for the Spring Classic!! www.cqphysiosc.com I promise a FAST course to set a PB!
PEX
Well done again PEX. Despite feeling the heat and working hard on a tough course, your form looked really good and I can already see the huge improvement in your running. keep it up mate and good luck for Toowoomba.
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