First ever negative split (Read 778 times)

Well I finished my 12 week aerobic base building phase today celebrating with a 14.1km/8.8 mile fun run. Started off with 27,000 other runners, although half of those were doing a shorter run that started 30mins later so not as bad. Pace early was surprisingly quick given the crowds but controllable. I was putting in sub 5min km's at the start and felt reasonable, but was a bit concerned considering my race aim was to finish in 5:00min/kms. That said, I think it was kilometre 6 that dropped out to a 5:22/km and I though 'oh oh, this could be bad' - but every kilometre after that was sub 5:00! Went through the 7 kilometre mark in 33:39 which was pleasing. Got to the 10km mark which had a drink station (i'd avoided them all until here) and I considered getting a drink, but felt very comfortable in my stride and didn't want to break it up with a walk/drink so continued on - another good sign of my LHR training which has limited my fuel intake to runs over 2hrs! The last 4k of the race seemed to fly along, maintained my end race average during these kilometres and felt incredible - not short of breath, tired, stitch or anything like that at all. I ended up finishing in a watch time of 1:06:54, with the gun time only slightly higher than this so very pleased considering the aim was 1:10:30. This turned my 5:00min/km or 8:03min/mile aim pace into 4:45p/km or 7:38p/mile. I found this absoloutely extraordinary as during the strict aerobic phase the fastest any of runs got down to was one run of 5:28p/km which was exceptional with most runs averaging at 5:40p/km. This means I was going 1min p/km faster than I had trained. Another credit to the aerobic training is that I achieved something I have never done before - I negative splitted a race for the first time! The first 7km was in 33:39 while the last 7.1km was in 33:15 which was incredible. Certainly sets me in good stead for my marathon in 14 weeks, i certainly have a lot more training to do including increasing my mileage significantly but this gives me so much encouragement to keep going. Hank

Wow that's great!