An awesome race culminating in a PB

Did the SMH Half Marathon yesterday which was awesome fun. My friend Pam came down on sat with me to race as well which was good. The race went really really wel and I think I have PBed by just over 3:30. By my watch I came in at 97:44 but I took about 1 sec to stop my watch so I guess about 97:43.

The race started well with a somewhat too fast 1st km on 4:10, slowing down slightly after that I was able to keep at about 4:35 pace for most of the first half. At about 5.5 km I caught CR Gronk who realised he was way ahead of his target pace as we were heading for about 96/97 min pace at that stage. After a brief chat about uni I kept going and caught CR truckie not far ahead. For the next 4 km or so Truckie and I ran together his presense helping me to keep pace until I lost contact with him. The 3rd five km I was rather slow which was somewhat dissapointing but I was able to pick up the pace again through the last 6 km or so. Although I didn't get the 97 mins I was after i came very close (there's always next time) It was great to catch up with the other CRs and Striders after the race. There were alot of PBs out there which is always impressive and all seemed to have a great time.

My times for the day were

1 4:10.7
2 4:30.6 8:41.4
3 4:37.2 13:18.6
4 4:41.9 18:00.5
5 4:22.0 22:22.5
6 4:40.4 27:02.9
7 4:44.0 31:46.9
8 4:21.9 36:08.7
9 4:39.0 40:47.8
10 4:57.6 45:45.4
10.5 48:11
11 4:53.6 50:38.3
12 4:25.0 55:03.4
13 4:58.9 60:00.2
14 4:56.5 64:58.7
15 4:36.3 69:35.0
16 5:01.1 74:36.1
17 4:49.1 79:25.2
18 4:25.0 82:50.2
19 4:41.5 88:31.7
20
21.1 9:12.1 97:44.8
10.6 49:33

time/km = 4:38

So in the end the second half let me down a fair bit but I was happy with my time.