I wasn’t filled with much confidence of a good time in the lead up to my second Barossa Half Marathon. For some reason I had an overwhelming feeling of failure, or was it lardiness?
Never the less I lined up at the start line at the more civil time of 9am, half heartedly ready to give my all. Time for a new game plan. Time to learn something different.
I picked someone out, a rabbit if you will, someone to chase from the start. My target…the six foot man…well he really isn’t six foot (I would say not even 5 foot) but he does like to wear his six foot singlets. I knew Kym ran less than 1hr50min at the Greenbelt HM, so if I chased him from the start I would be in line for a good time.
No more of this – start out slow, bring it home strong – for me today. The gun went off and I moved along at a decent clip, trying not to let Kym out of my sight. Down the finish straight and on towards the first hill. By the top of the hill I was level with Kym, but never again.
I stretched out the legs, letting my long legs do all the work down the hill and came up the other side already struggling to keep up the pace as we rounded the corner into the finish straight for the second time.
At the next drink station I took a longer than usual walk break while I sipped some water. I was losing touch with Kym and was in hurt town big time. Over the next lap and a half I had to give myself a stern talking to on many occasions, and the urge to walk was become overwhelmingly strong, the more I struggled on.
I was sure every time I heard footsteps behind me that it was other SARRC runners, about my speed, running me down. I was fading badly, and yet still catching people every now and then.
By 2km to go, only a couple of runners had actually passed me and I was pushing harder then ever with a 76 years young gentleman I had never beaten before running alongside. He stopped for a walk and I pushed on, urging my legs to punch out just 500 more metres as I was sure I could hear people sprinting up behind me.
With a final burst, some high fives for Colsy and Cakeboy and a bit of silly arm waving, I ran down the finish chute, to finish in an unofficial time of 1hr54min22sec. A hard fought course PB (8 minute PB to be precise) and my second fastest HM time (after the Greenbelt earlier this month).
I was disappointed the rain held off, I could have done with some cooling off on that last lap.
1 Comment
May 25, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Hey Simlin – any sub 2 is a good result in my book. Well done!
But stay away from those Six Foot characters – they’re a pretty shady lot