Warsaw half-marathon 2011

27/03/2011
half-marathon
Warsaw, Poland
1:33:05
4:24 min/km
169 hrm
505/4698 (11%)

[This post is about the event itself, you can ready my thoughts from before the race here]

The beginning were not too great. I couldn't sleep (pretty normal), then I overdid it and had too heavy breakfast (pretty silly) and upon arrival at the start I realized I was assigned to the last zone, because of paying late (pretty damn unlucky). As this would be a true nightmare I decided to skip ahead to my originally assigned time-zone; luckily no-one seemed to notice or care.

The first kilometer is slow as usual; I have to maneuver in the crowd, slowly making my way forward. But it's not too bad and the second one I already do with the target pace of 4:15. After a while I see the balloons of a pace-maker -- that must be the 1:30:00 guy. I stay some 20m behind him until the water point and then slowly take over... and I'm in for a surprise as this is not the 1:30:00, but 1:35:00 guy! What the heck?? But then I calm down -- my watch is not cheating on me, I'm having a good pace, so obviously those guys are too fast (only later I realized that they also had 1 minute on me from the start, as they were more in front).

Things go as planned till approximately 9th kilometer. I'm getting tired and keeping the pace seems to be increasingly difficult. By the 15th kilometer I'm being overtaken by the 1:35:00 guy and things start to go downhill. I'm tired, it gets windy, I loose hope for improving my personal best and hence loose big part of motivation in the race.

But I try not to give up completely. I won't improve my best, but maybe at least I can finish it 1:32:00? So I try my best to stick to the 1:35:00 guy and for the most part I succeed.

I finish in 1:33:05, a bit downcast but hey, could be worse, right? Although I did not get myself a nice birthday present. Oh well.

So now my perspectives for 3:10:00 in the coming full marathon is pretty slim indeed, but I'm still not loosing hopes for improving my 3:15:17. We will see. Pretty soon :)

P.S. Only now I realized that it was my best half-marathon results since 2005. I run two fast HMs in 2004 & 2005 and afterwards I did further 3 at times slightly worse than my today's time. So in some sense this can be seen as an improvement ;)

Comments

Karol Osłowski said…
Don't ever loose hope Adam, you are extremely optimistic in the daily life, the same should be valid in running situations.
March 28, 2011 at 1:38 AM
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