Wanganui Half Marathon Review

Okay, a very late review ... but today is cross-training/no run day so I thought it was a good time to try and finally remember the details.

Wanganui Half Marathon - Saturday 12 December 2010

This came at the end of a really busy time in our household, in hindsight, that showed in my running and how I felt ... but hindsight is always a wonderful thing!

Wanganui is about 2hrs drive from here so my two sisters and I decided early on we would go up Friday and spend Friday night in Wanganui, then run on Saturday. Once again Georgie was doing the 10km, Julie the half marathon. As it turns out, Cam was playing a rep game against Wanganui on the Sunday ... perfect timing! I then decided I'd take the two girls with me (David was rostered to work that weekend) and we'd stay the Saturday night as well. It was Rhiannon's birthday on the Friday, so it was a nice birthday weekend for her too.

The girls both decided they wanted to go to school on Friday morning and be picked up at lunchtime (I have strange children who love school! LOL), which suited me fine, I still had things to do and finish off before we left - it was a rushed morning, and we didn't leave until more like 2pm rather than the planned lunchtime. We stopped at McDonalds on the way up for a very late lunch and arrived in Wanganui about 5ish. Connected with Georgie and Julie, and Julie's son David (who is a couple of years older than the girls ... the planned kinda babysitter while we were running!) and went for a quick visit to my niece and her baby ... then went and picked up our race numbers. At this time it was stinking hot and humid ... and we were wondering what it was going to be like to run in, in the morning! Rain was forecast though so hopefully that would kill the humidity. We had some dinner, sat up and chatted a while, and then went to our motel rooms to sleep. It was hot and sticky, not good sleeping weather at all ... then about 3.00am the heavens opened up and the temperature dropped - yay!

So got up Saturday morning, it wasn't raining ... but the clouds were heavy. Went down to the start which was in a boating club clubrooms. Not long before the start time, the heavens opened and boy did they open it absolutely bucketed down, oh no. They had the pre-start talk in the basement boat storage amongst all the rowing boats, Julie and I being the polite girls we were brought up to be, were standing towards the back, and being polite when the talk had finished we took our time leaving letting the people in front of us all leave first and politely letting people come in, get in. Bad idea.

So, Wanganui is a 10.6 lap course - two laps for the half marathon, four laps for the full marathon. I wasn't worried about this at all, even though Ms Negative Nelly (my oldest sister) had of course told me that it was a horrible course (she seems to say that about every course she runs, not sure why she bothers!). Anyway, two laps, and runs alongside the big Whanganui River, crossing 3 bridges - 5 times, I think ... I've been trying to remember how it worked, but can't remember!

So, the start, Julie and I come out of dark basement clubrooms, into the pouring rain ... and ... S*** they've already started! The big bunch of runners is about 100m ahead of us, we weren't the only ones, there were a few of us muttering "thanks very much, great organisation!" Now, as soon as I started I told myself just keep to your pace, it doesn't matter that everyone else is ahead, and I think I did okay with that - but I'm not sure that it still didn't affect me. Julie had decided to run on her own this race so she had taken on well and truly ahead of me. I was running next to, the same pace as a tall girl for about the first 1k, we chatted a bit at first, but really ... it annoyed me having someone next to me ... I was quite pleased when she eased a head of me (ha! come on Lisa, how many people do you think are going to be right next to you in London? LOL). The rain stopped after about 1km and it never rained again, but the parts where we ran through the park were really really muddy.

The first half dragged. Really dragged. I didn't think that first lap would ever be over. I really wanted to run this half in 2:06, I was checking my time, trying to stick to about 6:00min ks. I did, but it was too fast. By the time I got to the start/finish, so halfway, I was right on time - 1:03 something, but I was tired, really tired. The kids were at the halfway point cheering us on, which was really nice ... nothing like a cheer from family to keep you going! I decided then just to run comfortably, I still had half to go! That is what I did, and at about 13/14k I actually felt really good, mad with myself that I'd slowed down, and also mad that I'd put too much into the first half. So I felt good for about 3-4k then hit about 18k and was really really tired. I wanted to walk, and I'd had enough. I made myself keep running, mostly because if I couldn't run it in 2:06, I definitely wanted to be faster than my first half marathon of 2:12 and told myself that even if I was running slowly, it wasn't that much slower than I wanted.

By the time I got to the end my oldest sister (the non running one, not Ms Negative Nelly one), niece and great niece were at the end to cheer us in as well :)

I'd set myself up a playlist for this half marathon, ending with one of my favourites at 2:06 (Smashmouth's You're an All Star - probably not the right name, I'm hopeless with music!), and then had thought, I better have an extra if I went over ... so tagged Step's Tragedy on at the end, ha ha sick sense of humour. But I did indeed get to Tragedy, but I finished before the song finished! LOL ... 2:09:12 That was my time, and I'm taking that one ... the official one was going to be wrong because we started late!

All in all, not really the most enjoyable run. But a good experience, and a good lesson. Don't go out too fast!

As for recovery, I was pretty stiff and sore on the Saturday, but by Sunday wasn't too bad at all - so although I felt pretty tired and it was hard work, I probably did okay :)

Saturday afternoon, I took the girls to a movie, we had takeaways at the motel and relaxed for the evening, it was lovely. Sunday morning we went off and watched Cam's cricket, then left early enough to make it home to Rhiannon's birthday party at the local 10 Pin Bowling place, and dinner afterwards, a busy weekend!

Official results:
2:09:52
31/53 Women
10/16 Age Placing

... and Julie? She did good :) 1:57:36 (17/53, 10/31 in her age group - she slips into the U40's, I don't!).