Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2018 (Read 704 times)

Good luck Mark and Steve! Weather forecast for me now says 60 at start, up to 70 a couple hours later. I guess I will use the drinking stations to pour some water over my head.

Rune have a good one.

Mark should be just about underway. Conditions sound perfect and better than snow and flooded conditions that we had in 2016.

Jmac im the first to crumble when it gets hot here so that makes my Dew Point trolling even worse 

Are you guys posting rude things and deleting them ? Not fair I want to see them 

I hate that they invented the word troll. I always was good at been sarcastic and having a laugh which fits todays Troll description perfectly.

I managed another 8kms yesterday and had a surf. Still coughing but the end is in sight. Surf is primo so will get out there now and maybe run later.

Go Mark!

"live" results for Taupo are here:

https://my5.raceresult.com/103981/results?lang=en#3_657260

Mark split 1 is 37:42.  I GUESS that is 10k in. Could be halfway?

Theres no prizes at Taupo.

Race report- Taupo Half Marathon 2018

Last time I did this race, it was one of only two races I've seriously considered quitting (the other being my FM last year).  Horrible weather and a dodgy stomach made the last 7km pretty miserable and the only thing that kept me going was that a PB was in sight.

Fast forward two years and conditions are almost perfect.  7C at race start, no rain, almost no wind apart from a very light southerly breeze.  And I got almost 8 hours sleep last night too which is near unheard-of for me before a big race.

I walk down to the start line with my wife and daughter, then go for a quick warm-up jog.  I was tossing up between the Saucony Fastwitch's and Mizuno Wave Sonics for this race, ended up going with the Sauconys which turned out to be a good call because they felt awesome.  Great feel and a surprising amount of cushion for a 160g racing flat too.  Anyway, as I line up on the start line I realise I've forgotten my gels.  BIt of a rookie error but the words of JMac are ringing in my ears ("you don't really need them for a half") so I decide I'll just wing it with electrolytes from the aid station.

Taupo is a race that has alternated between having quite strong fields, and quite shallow ones.  There are enough guys around in club singlets that I figure this is a stronger year - this turned out to be the case with the winner running a 1:12 and the rest of the podium in 1:14.

Anyway there's a countdown but weirdly no gun/hooter but everyone takes off anyway.  The start of the course has a weird steep downhill/turn corner/steep uphill before hitting the main road for a fairly steady grind out towards the airport.  I go from 2nd to 10th in the space of about 600m but when the first km comes up at 3:22 I realise that some people might pay the price for this later.  I settle back into a steadier pace for the next 4km which are mostly flat and fairly boring running along the main road (3:33, 3:36, 3:38, 3:42). Sure enough I've already overtaken one guy in a Kapiti singlet who sounds like he's finishing a 5km.  I'm solo, but that doesn't bother me and so it seems is almost everyone else ahead of me.  Kudos to the kids at the aid station at ~6km who had the best cup handoff technique I'd seen (they were challenging themselves to get water to runners with little/no spillage and did an awesome job).

The next section has a slow but deceptively long climb, which actually deceived me.  I got myself in a bit of a funk here as I was having to work to turn the legs over and my hands were getting cold (I opted against gloves because I only had my decent merino ones and I didn't have anywhere to store them if my hands got too hot).  But the splits kept getting slower (3:42, 3:46).  It was only when I looked at the elevation profile later I realised that I'd actually still been climbing when I thought the climb was over.  Deceptive, like I say.

Anyway I make a point of blasting down the other side of the hill towards the airport (3:37, 3:34).  I overtook a guy in a blue singlet here, and a guy in a black singlet is about 15 seconds ahead of me.  He actually turned around and looked back too, which seemed a little pointless at that stage of the race.  Anyway the main road is still boring apart from the fact I saw a white police car, a red police car, a blue police car (motorway patrol have different coloured cars), and the Porsche belonging to one of the partners at the firm I work for.  So, yeah I was counting cars.

Finally we turn the corner into 5 Mile Bay and go off the boring main road into the boring suburban section.  I think the 'halfway' split was at this point but it certainly wasn't actually at halfway.  There's a turnaround so I can see the lead guy has probably a good minute on 2nd, and former winner Ben Ruthe (Piwi's mate) in 3rd.  Black singlet still has around 15 seconds on me.  I grab some sports drink at the aid station at ~11km, it tasted pretty watered down so I hope there's actually something other than water in there.  Legs are feeling good and strangely I managed the uphill bit of the turnaround faster than the downhill (3:40, 3:37), so I figure the lack of gel will hopefully be a non-issue.

Finally we turn on to the lake, which is more interesting/picturesque, but also has lots of little twists and turns and undulations, so it's also slightly harder to find a rhythm.  I can see two others guys in front of black singlet, and while I'm gaining on black singlet slowly, it also looks like he's gaining on the other two guys.  But it's slow making headway and it's quite hard to gauge accurately on the pathway around the lake.  Pace is holding very solid at 3:39, 3:38, 3:42, and with the legs still feeling good I figure I might not quite hit a PB, but I sure won't be far off it.  These are the coldest temps I've raced in for a long time and it's harder to gauge effort because normally I can feel myself start to heat up.  But the HR is solid around 170 and has been in the mid-high 160's for practically the whole race so that's a good sign that I'm not fatiguing.

Coming up to the 14km aid station, black singlet passes the other two guys, then I pass both of them and catch black singlet, shortly before I completely fail to grab a cup of sports drink and it ends up all over the pavement (I guess I got a bit over excited with all the passing).  I manage at least to grab a water.  Black singlet asks how far in we are and I realise he's just running off a stop watch.  It kinda surprises me because I figured all fast dudes had GPS watches.  He also points out the complete absence of km markers, and he was right (the only one I saw was at the 16km mark).  Anyway, having a bit of company really kicked me up a gear at this point because km's 15 and 16 were 3:32 and 3:33 and as we finally turn off the lakeside path and onto the road again, km 17 is 3:37 as is km 18.  Legs are still feeling really strong but there's a very gradual but niggly climb into Taupo on the main road so I need to save something for that.

Black singlet is still hanging with me but I can hear his breathing has gotten pretty heavy (he even said he thought he'd gone out a bit quick).  As we hit the climb I can hear him start to drop off.  There's a whole lot of 10km runners coming in the opposite direction but plenty of space so I figure it's a solo run to the finish from here.  I felt like I tried to give it a nudge here but wasn't going quite as fast as I'd hoped because km's 19 and 20 are 3:40 and 3:42 albeit both very slight uphill inclines.  At this point I realised I would be close to PB, but unlikely to hit it, because the sting in the tail of the course is the way the final km drops you down a hill, around the back of the reserve, before sending you back up quite a steep climb to the finish line in the reserve (sure enough the last km is 3:45).

Anyway I manage to power up the hill, I actually glanced at my watch at this point and realised the HRM must've spazzed out because it's only reading 155bpm.  There's enough in the legs to kick a bit harder to the finish line and official time is 1:16:20, turns out I was 5th overall too (2nd M35-39).

There's slightly mixed feelings about being so close to a PB, but still having a really good race which I definitely paced well based on the number of people I passed through the middle of the race.  I figure there's enough hills and twists and turns in the course that it probably cost 20-30 seconds and I figure a 5 minute improvement over my time in this race in 2016 is something to be pretty happy about.  It's a massive improvement over where I was 10 months ago, and so I'm now excited for the Dunedin HM in a month, as well as Auckland 10K champs in a couple of weeks where I reckon a 10K PB could definitely be on the cards.  In any event, it's nice to get rid of a few demons from the 2016 race!

I catch up with Gene Rand who also ran just under 1:17 and will hopefully go for a cruise with him tomorrow morning.  My watch had the course 70m short but his had it bang on so I guess the GPS just got a bit lost with the trees around the lake.  Then my 1.5 year old daughter starts taking a high degree of interest in the chocolate fish I got after the finish line so I share some with her which she thinks is more or less the best thing ever.

Official time: 1:16:20

Awesome report Mark. I think Ruthe used to be about a 1.06 guy. I got that course short too as did most on strava by about 100m.