The Great Forest Half Marathon

I broke 2hrs!! Yayyyyy!!

Official Results:
1:57:41
232/415 Total Finishers
58/182 Female Finishers
10/36 Age Group Finishers

I've come a long way from being worried about being last :)

and if you're number crazy like me, the splits -

1km - 5:31
2km - 5:36
3km - 5:41
4km - 5:53
5km - 5:45
6km - 5:41
7km - 5:36
8km - 5:50
9km - 5:32
10km - 5:36
11km - 5:37
12km - 5:35
13km - 5:37
14km - 5:49
15km - 5:33
16km - 5:36
17km - 5:27
18km - 5:33
19km - 5:32
20km - 5:29
0.92km - 5:06

I struggled with not going to fast in the beginning, even though everyone seemed to be passing me (and I'm sure I caught up to them and passed most of those people later on). A couple of the earlier slower k's I think were actually the GPS having trouble in the trees, a couple of times I looked down at it and saw either really fast or really slow times when I knew I was holding pretty steady, I think that 8km 5:50 was one of those, and then the slightly fast 5:32 was evening it out.

I knew 5:42/k was the 2hr pace, so tried to keep my overall pace to nothing above 5:40, allowing a little time for a gel stop at 13k - turns out I did that pretty fast anyway, opened it before the drink stop while I was running, had most of it and then just had a good drink and carried on.

I would have liked to have gone just a bit faster at the end, but I was well and truly tired, I did managed slightly fast splits though :)

The "expert" runners I know have all said how great it is to break that 2hrs on that particular course, apparently it is a slow one.

Great course though! It is all through forest (near a beach) and logging tracks, so most of it is on packed gravel roads, although there were quite a few places of loose sand which made running a bit harder. The worst of it, I thought, was catching up to the walkers who left earlier and having to watch footing with the sand and rocks plus trying to dodge around them, nothing major, but definitely made it harder.

It was a sunny, hot day, but you didn't really notice until you ran into the odd "no tree" places, because the trees acted as shelter the whole time.

Lovely family atmosphere. My older sister ran the half marathon as well (1:48), her 17yo son ran the 10k and my niece was there to hang out with my two girls and make sure they made it to the 5km start - they ran together in 37min (not bad considering neither of them have done any running at all!). I was there before they finished so I could cheer them in ... they looked very sweet running in together, and I didn't have my camera!

We sat around and had some lunch in the sunshine and just before I knew Deirdre would be finishing, who was running her marathon that we've been training together for, I walked out a couple of k and then ran with her to the end - she did good, 4:25 and looked tired, but pretty good when she finished.

So, now its serious tapering, next long run is *only* 13km next weekend!

My legs feel great ... but my toes are smashed, they were sore after the 35k last weekend, after yesterday one of my big toes is hurting, I think it needs a needle stuck in it, not sure whether I'm willing to do it though ;) I should be running yesterdays run of 6.5k today, but I think I will leave it and give the toes a rest. 21k running hardish, rather than 19 easy, should make up for the missed 6.5! I've got to go out on my bike today, so I think I'll shift my days up for the week, make today cross training day, run tomorrow, with the days pushed up, I'll run next Monday as well before we fly out later on that night ... we'll be on an aeroplane on Tuesday when I'd normally be running (maybe I could run up and down the aisles for 4km?).

Yessss ... only one week until we spent about 24hrs flying, oh yay ... I'm not looking forward to that part!

Hope everyone else is having a good weekend :)