Notes
The short version is that I suspect the course was long by about 98m, the first 3k felt fine, I was a little wimpy perhaps on the 4th km, there were some winds but nothing really extreme, and I finished with a time that I consider ""reasonable"" for the day.
Before the race start, it was announced that we should NOT run tangents but rather keep to the right side at all times since the course was measured along the curb. Presumably this is done because it is an out and back course.
The race started and there were the usual little blockades of people slowing down to get through during the first km.
A couple of minutes into the race, I watched most of the lead pack blatantly ignore the directions and run tangents. I watched maybe 2 people in front out of 20 at least keep to the right of the center line and I followed at this point but for the rest of the race I tended to just follow the people in front of me.
I planned to pace by feel and GPS average pace on the watch, holding 3:58 on the way out and whatever I had in me on the return. At the 2.5k turn around, I was right about bang on the 3:58 average. At this point it felt pretty easy, if I recall correctly, and there may have been a bit of tail wind assistance.
Predictably, the return trip was more challenging being later into the race and with headwinds. The HR log shows a slight lag around in the 4th km. I may have slightly gone too hard in the km before trying to maintain pace into a headwind and together with having no one close in front to hang onto and all the usual reasons, this led to a bit of a slack off. I glanced at the watch a couple of times but was mainly just concentrating on trying to keep the form together and retain some amount of motivation.
I managed to pick it up a bit in the last 800m and make up a few seconds.
Split Distance Pace
1 0.500 3:42
2 0.500 3:57
3 0.500 4:01
4 0.500 4:00
5 0.500 4:02
6 0.500 3:59
7 0.500 4:05
8 0.500 4:12
9 0.500 4:12
10 0.598 3:55