Sunday, December 03, 2006

Central Coast Half Marathon

Sub 4 minute k's baby!
An early start, meaning up at 3:30am for the drive up to The Entrance. Arrived at 6am to a very short reg line. Which about 10 minutes later ballooned into a 20min line. The Organisers were a bit overwhelmed. So much that the race didn't start until 7:25 instead of 7am. We didn't exactly start in the correct spot, probably about 50metres ahead of the line. I guess you can call the course a bit short then. Showers and wind all during the race which didn't let up until just near the finish. How unusual.

Had a good start and got into the correct pace from the start. The lack of klm markers that you could see didn't help the pacing.They were spray painted on the grass next to the bike path. The 4.5k mark was when the 9k fun run turned around which came up in 16:53. Other splits that I recalled were 8k 31:43, 9k 35:43, 13k 51:45, 18k 72:12, 20k 80:00.
The course was basically dead flat but very wet from the rain which made it hard hurdling puddles or plowing straight through some. I was very happy to still keep my pacing even through the race without any noticeable bad k's at all.

The finish was a hard sprint into the wind for the last klm to finish in 84:12. Well if it is 50metres short I guess you could add on 10 seconds and I'm still under the 4min/k pace.
It was great to get all the support from CR's out on the course and before and after the race. I nearly ended up in the water at the end as the legs were pretty wobbly and the finish area is a bit narrow.

Thanks for everyone's support this year. It has been hard work trying to get back to the form I had last year before the 2 stressies. Now to work on my slack 10k and Marathon times.

P.S Can't tell you about the date just yet.

11 comments:

Ellie80 said...

great run mate - sorry not to catch up and debrief! but more to the point - tell us about the date!!!! must be a subsequent date in the pipeline...

Jen said...

Sensational run Flake - congrats!

And enjoy the next date ;-)

Gronk said...

Onya Flake. Not many work at it as hard as you do. Well deserved. :)

Tesso said...

Wow, fantastic stuff Flakey!!!

As somebody who struggles to run one km under 4 mins I am in total awe. And if you do the basic "double your half mara time and add 10 minutes" to calculate your marathon time you know what the result is :-)


PS Stop teasing us!!!

Bernie G said...

Congrats Paul. You looked really focused out there yesterday.

Ewen said...

Well done Paul - that's a good breakthrough. Must be down to your recent track racing ;)

2P said...

Congrats on the PB mate - sub 4's lol sounds like the Thunderbirds (obscure I know).

Well done Flakey that really is a fantastic result.

Horrie said...

Great effort Flake. To run sub 4 minute kms in those conditions was a great effort. You're right about those 10km and marathon PBs. They are starting to look very soft.

Spud said...

Awesome effort, training is paying dividends now, delighted for you mate.

miners said...

Fantastic effort mate, and very well deserved after such a disrupted couple of years. Great to catch up with you (hope your mum had a nice birthday!) and will schedule in a proper race for us one day soon I promise.

So at last count, I believe I may have pipped you at our last 'official' race (C2S), but you've gone and well and truly smashed my 1/2 PB by a good 3 minutes! Congrats Paul

Matty said...

Top effort Flake!! Great to see you putting it all together!

Gees, what are you going to do to that soft 10k PB next time out?