... First Half Marathon & first race of the season...

It's been done! Despite limited training time during my stint in Munich Germany, I am quite happy with the outcome of the race yesterday. Given that I just got back from Germany on Thursday night and not entirely over the jet lag yet, I cannot complain about my 1:28:30!
As is always the case, I take a few kilometers to get comfortable and settle into my pace. Margreet - a friend and  long distance runner from Squamish - and I started out together with the plan to run at 4:15/KM pace. We ended up running a bit faster as we both felt comfortable. At the 10KM mark I felt so confident that I put everything on the line and decided to shoot for 1:25:00 which I knew was over-ambitious! But even at 17K I felt I might be able to squeeze in just under 1:26. Then I felt my legs getting lactic and my HR came up by 3-4 beats despite constant pace. Then I knew I was going to die on the last few kilometers. But as my former coach John Hill always suggested, you have to put everything on the line in a Half Marathon. If you die on the finish stretch you lose some time but probably less than going out to slowly in the race.
The most surprising thing of the day was to look at my heart rate profile post race. It was my first race ever with an HR monitor, and I was surprised to see that my average was 162 bpm... WOW!

I hope this data will help to streamline and focus my workouts during the next weeks. I would think, Jen is on it!
It was great to meet and connect with "old" friends at the race. And I always appreciate the VFAC Blue Train as those guys and girls run by the clock with constant pace "dictated" by their coach John... If you want to run a certain time in any given race, ask John which of the VFAC runner has a similar target time - stick with them! Finish time guaranteed given you have done your homework...