On Sunday I ran a 1:20:18 half-marathon near Mount Fuji. It was wonderfully cool weather (11 degrees) after the wretched death slog in the 35 degree heat at China Ironman.
I stayed behind my ultra-marathon teammate Yoshida-san for the first 5k and when I heard our split of 21:45 I was not optimistic about my ultimate finishing time. Thanks to Yoshida-san's comfortable pace, the long uphill climb on the first 5k did not actually seem so difficult to me. So when we got to top of the hill I accelerated, running 18:54 for my second 5k. I pulled within about 20 seconds of younger, faster teammate Gerard and was pulled along by my effort to keep him in sight.
At 14k I started to weaken a bit. This is usually when a half-marathon starts to get painful for me. But here is the wonderful thing about the Fuji-Susono course: since the last 4.5k is downhill, I merely needed to survive until about 16.5k and then I could cruise. And cruise I did -covering the last 5k in approximately 16:30. I have always assumed that you cannot make up time on the downhill that you had lost because of running slower on the uphill, but somehow at Fuji-Susono I did make up lost time (even though I do not consider myself a strong runner on downhills). I finished 4th in 40-49 division.
Needless to say, I would have liked to break 1:20, but given training and conditions I was delighted with my race. My time was very similar to my Tokyo (half) Marathon time in February - in both cases I started out at a slow pace and enjoyed a relatively comfortable run. The shift to more bicycle and swim training over the past few months did not seem to slow me down.
No comments:
Post a Comment