Reading Half Marathon 2010 - Race Report

Hi all,

Here's my race report on the Reading Half Marathon, as it happened. In writing this, it will also help me dissect my performance, and what I can address in future with regards to my marathon goal.

In summary, I ran a new personal best of 1:34:35, a 2 minute improvement from last year. But I failed in running a sub 1:30:00 time. I did the best I could on the day, but ultimately came up short. At the moment, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. And there's always the "what if's" that go through my mind as well.

I actually felt really good heading into the race. Having arrived at the stadium really early, I had ample time to find the necessary facilities, get changed and get to the starting blocks. The music was psyching me up as well, so I lined up at the starting block for runners finishing in 1 hour 30 minutes. I was hoping to stick to the pacesetter, George Anderson, as much as possible.

However, around 10 minutes to the start, I got a surprise when I found myself lined up with a pacesetter for runners finishing in 1 hour 35 minutes. Not to worry, perhaps I can catch up to George later on in the race. I couldn't see his pace flag as I looked ahead through the mass of runners in front of me. And believe me, there were A LOT of runners. The start felt really comfortable, but that was probably due to me being boxed in by the mass of runners in front. I tried weaving around them, which probably wasn't a good idea. Eventually the group of runners in front thinned out after around 2 miles and I was able to run my own race. At that point, I had already passed the pacesetter for 1 hour 35 minutes. I felt like I was working hard but I was confident that I would sustain the effort and reach George later on. Little did I know that I was going to be in for a surprise later on.

There were timing mats at 5, 10, 15 and 20 km this year. I managed to get to the 5 km mat in 22:29. I was over a minute off the pace, but I still felt strong despite feeling that I was working hard. Around the 6 mile mark, I saw George for the first time. He was running in the opposite direction after doing a loop on Kings Rd, so I figured that I was only about 400 metres behind him. I got to the 10 km mat in 44:05. Still a minute off the pace, but I was slowly catching up. Having managed to see George, I was about to pick up the pace.

Unfortunately the sun was high in the sky by then, and I started to get hot. I tried cooling myself by pouring water over my head, which relieved things for a bit. But I also felt myself getting slower in the later stages of the race. The Russell Street hill felt really hard for some reason. Every stride felt like an effort, and I tried not to stop or even walk for a bit. I got to the 15 km mat in 66:54, and the 10 mile marker in 71 mins. I did the maths in my head, and knew it was going to take something very special to break 1:30:00. My pace was 7.1 mins/mile, and I knew that wasn't fast enough. I would have to run the next 3 miles in 19 minutes, and I've never done that before in training or a race situation.

Alas, I wasn't able to dig any deeper and by the time I reached Green Park, I knew that the dream to finish in 1:30:00 was dead, and I have to settle on beating my current personal best as much as I could. I didn't realise how far off target I was when I saw the 1 hour 35 minute pacesetter a few metres behind me. How did he catch up? In an effort to outrun him, I tried pushing the pace one last time. It was pretty much agony as I just didn't have anything in my legs to go faster. On the way to the stadium, I saw paramedics tending to a fallen runner, wearing an oxygen mask in the recovery position. I'm thankful that I didn't suffer the same way. A few minutes later I crossed the finish line with a new PB, but also with shattered confidence.

After that, I managed to get access to the adidas VIP area for a free massage and food. I was pretty disappointed with the massage; I felt as if the masseur went too softly. Or maybe I was too angry with myself after that run to notice. But the food was great and I managed to help myself to two plates of delicious pasta.

I'm trying to answer what went wrong on the day. The weather did feel quite hot actually, so perhaps I could make excuses about the weather. I also lined up in the wrong starting area; maybe if I lined up in the correct starting area, I would've had an easier time coping with the masses of runners in front.

But if those split times are anything to go by, I think that I'm finding myself quite comfortable running at a certain pace. My 5 km time was 22:29, which is average but not that great. In my 5-10 km split I ran 21:36. I've never pushed myself to run a 5 km time faster than 21 mins. Having run the majority of my races over marathon and half marathon distance I haven't really been tested in shorter races, which emphasises speed over endurance. Maybe that is my current weakness, I don't know for sure. I'm sure that I have the endurance base, but maybe the speed and lactate threshold isn't as high as I would like them to be.

Looking at my overall performance, I went to McMillan Running Calculator to see the equivalent performance for a marathon based on my half marathon time. It gave a time of 3:19:29 which is pretty disheartening. My current PB in the marathon is 3:22:45, and I felt on the day of the marathon that I was on track for a sub 3:20:00 run if the weather was a little cooler. If I were to have any chance of running a sub 3:00:00 marathon time, I need to be consistently running around or below 1:25:00 times in a half marathon, and despite my best efforts today I failed to get even close. So the question is whether I'm able to break 3 hours in a marathon this year. Do I have the goods? Do I have enough time? Should I be revising my goal this year? Questions are ringing out like alarm bells.

Today feels like a setback, but this is a personal best so I'm happily going to take that. On a positive note, one performance doesn't make or break a season, so I'm going to take what I can from this and apply it in training. Physically, I'm actually feeling rather good at the moment, but that may be a different story when I wake up in the morning. I'll be taking things easy next week, and will get into proper training after that. It will be interesting to see what will change in my training as a result of my run today.

Weary, but still positive,

Aaron