Time difference for sandy trail half marathon (Read 351 times)

higa

posted: 1/24/2008 at 3:38 PM

I am doing a half marathon on Sunday. It is not in my home town so I ran part of the course yesterdy and it is mostly sand and gravel paths. Defintely not what i was expecting and certainly not what i have trained for. My gut feel is that i will be around 10 min slower. My fastest half mara is 2.06 but i am using this as a training run for a marathon in a couple of months so i'm not expecting a good time. Does anyone know what sort of affect running on sandy underfoot has? What would be a realistic time difference?

tschepsit

Burninated Peasant

posted: 1/24/2008 at 5:29 PM

Quote from higa on 1/24/2008 at 3:38 PM:

I am doing a half marathon on Sunday. It is not in my home town so I ran part of the course yesterdy and it is mostly sand and gravel paths. Defintely not what i was expecting and certainly not what i have trained for. My gut feel is that i will be around 10 min slower. My fastest half mara is 2.06 but i am using this as a training run for a marathon in a couple of months so i'm not expecting a good time. Does anyone know what sort of affect running on sandy underfoot has? What would be a realistic time difference?

Between February and March last year, I went from 1:35 to 1:45 in similar conditions between a hilly road half and a hilly sandy trail half. Of course, the guy that finished right in front of me at the trail half ran 5 minutes faster than he did at the road half, so your results may vary.