Notes
Pleased!
Liisa is in Norway this weekend with Rory so I am alone with Finn. He didn't sleep well last night and so the preparation for this race wasn't ideal. No much to eat beforehand as I had so much to do before Eija arrived to babysit.
The running I've been doing recently meant that I expected a PB. I set the watch for sub 1.40 though so I was bit confident of a big PB.
Felt a bit tight at the start and went off too quick for the first km. Intentionally slowed down as I was weary of last year's disaster. Kept a decent pace and attempted to keep the heart rate below 170. Felt strong at halfway but I didn't have much of a lead over 1.40 so was expecting to miss out.
Bumped into a guy from HM (don't know his name) and ran with him for a few kms. He was holding back as he had a marathon soon. I left him behind as I needed to increase my buffer on the flatter kms but didn't really gain much time. Simply kept up with goal pace. But would that be good enough?
Pushed to the hills in the last few kms and knew I would lose ground. My lead fell from 50 seconds to under 20 going into the last 3km. Started to ramp up the effort after that as I knew that I was close. Felt very tough.
The last km I went hard. Mentally it wasn't easy to keep going. I'm surprised it was as fast as 4:25.
I ended up almost going under 1.39 which was a shock as I expected 1.39.30ish based upon my last watch glance with 500m to go.
PB and under 1.40. Happy!