Hello, fan... I may have become lazy with my blogging, but I'm still running. Just completed the Brussels half marathon a week ago.
Throughout spring and summer I managed yet another placing in my age category in the Flemish Brabant challenge competition (more on that in another post). In the meantime I was building up the length of my long runs in preparation for the half marathon, which included two-hour runs, plus weekly runs to stay in shape, in Malta in the peak of summer in August.
It was a good build up. I had a setback in mid-September due to a strain in my back, which forced me to stop running for one week, but I had enough time to recover for the big day on Sunday 4th October.
It was a day of perfect weather, sunny with a mild temperature. We set off from the Parc Cinquantenaire, about 8000 runners, towards Rue de la Loi through the middle of the EU district where I work, on to the the Parc de Bruxelles in front of the king's palace. The first 10 km are not so easy, undulating with a net rise in level, but not really tough.
I had a bit of a shock at the 10 km checkpoint, which had a clock showing the time, a bit over 50 minutes. This was very slow indeed, little better than training pace, but I consoled myself that either: (a) it was positioned in the wrong place (quite a common occurrence in races organised in Belgium), or (b) it was actually the half way mark, i.e. 10.55 km. It dawned on me later that the position was correct and the time was the official time from the start, including the time it took me to get to the starting line.
Of course, the main reason for the poor time is really simple. I'm slowing down, but more on that later.
On a positive note, my race was a crescendo from start to finish. After the 10 km mark there's a downhill stretch towards Watermael. It was easy to pick up the pace here, of course, but when the road levelled out I kept a good rhythm through Auderghem towards the much feared hill up Avenue de Tervuren. Here the half marathon runners are joined by the marathon runners who are coming back from their 21 km loop into Tervuren, and you lose track of which runners around you are your direct rivals for the half, or whether they are incidental rivals doing the full marathon. In any case, your main concern here to go up the hill, which is longer than one kilometre.
There's an obelisk that marks the end of the hill, and from then on there remain about 6 km to the end of the race. I decided to increase the pace some more and started picking up people ahead with the aim of overtaking them. Many of them may have been taking part in the full marathon, but I didn't care and it didn't matter. It helped me keep a strong pace. I wasn't the only one doing this, of course, and in fact I was also being overtaken by a few others. For instance, in some cases I would pick someone to reach who was also doing my overtaking game and I would soon realise I couldn't reach him (it was mostly men at this stage of the race). So I would forget about him and look for someone else, while in the meantime overtaking others whom I had ignored.
It was quite interesting, actually, and apart from improving my time it helped for the last stretch to go by rather quickly. We raced downhill towards the old centre of Brussels, back on the detested cobble stones, into the spectacular Grand Place, which I hardly noticed, and zigzagging from one cobbled street to the next until the final turn and the open space known as De Brouckere. The finishing sprint is not one of my strongest points and in fact I was overtaken by several runners here, but it's not really important - a great winning sprint earns you three or four positions (to place in 1324th instead of 1329th place out of 8000) and you gain maybe 5 to 10 seconds, but it leaves you half dead. I was happy enough with my solid effort spread throughout the 21 km.
I've resigned myself to the inevitable. I'm slowing down at roughly one minute per year but at 53 I'm still placing much higher than midpoint in the overall classification. This was my favourite type of performance - the first section at a moderate pace which helps preserve energy for a strong second half - well executed.
As I remarked on Facebook, a one minute slowdown per year would mean a half marathon in 1h59 at the age of 70. I should be quite happy with that.
For all my effort, I got this nice medal, sore leg muscles for two days, and a happy conviction that I can look forward to doing well in other future events.
Throughout spring and summer I managed yet another placing in my age category in the Flemish Brabant challenge competition (more on that in another post). In the meantime I was building up the length of my long runs in preparation for the half marathon, which included two-hour runs, plus weekly runs to stay in shape, in Malta in the peak of summer in August.
It was a good build up. I had a setback in mid-September due to a strain in my back, which forced me to stop running for one week, but I had enough time to recover for the big day on Sunday 4th October.
It was a day of perfect weather, sunny with a mild temperature. We set off from the Parc Cinquantenaire, about 8000 runners, towards Rue de la Loi through the middle of the EU district where I work, on to the the Parc de Bruxelles in front of the king's palace. The first 10 km are not so easy, undulating with a net rise in level, but not really tough.
I had a bit of a shock at the 10 km checkpoint, which had a clock showing the time, a bit over 50 minutes. This was very slow indeed, little better than training pace, but I consoled myself that either: (a) it was positioned in the wrong place (quite a common occurrence in races organised in Belgium), or (b) it was actually the half way mark, i.e. 10.55 km. It dawned on me later that the position was correct and the time was the official time from the start, including the time it took me to get to the starting line.
Of course, the main reason for the poor time is really simple. I'm slowing down, but more on that later.
On a positive note, my race was a crescendo from start to finish. After the 10 km mark there's a downhill stretch towards Watermael. It was easy to pick up the pace here, of course, but when the road levelled out I kept a good rhythm through Auderghem towards the much feared hill up Avenue de Tervuren. Here the half marathon runners are joined by the marathon runners who are coming back from their 21 km loop into Tervuren, and you lose track of which runners around you are your direct rivals for the half, or whether they are incidental rivals doing the full marathon. In any case, your main concern here to go up the hill, which is longer than one kilometre.
There's an obelisk that marks the end of the hill, and from then on there remain about 6 km to the end of the race. I decided to increase the pace some more and started picking up people ahead with the aim of overtaking them. Many of them may have been taking part in the full marathon, but I didn't care and it didn't matter. It helped me keep a strong pace. I wasn't the only one doing this, of course, and in fact I was also being overtaken by a few others. For instance, in some cases I would pick someone to reach who was also doing my overtaking game and I would soon realise I couldn't reach him (it was mostly men at this stage of the race). So I would forget about him and look for someone else, while in the meantime overtaking others whom I had ignored.
It was quite interesting, actually, and apart from improving my time it helped for the last stretch to go by rather quickly. We raced downhill towards the old centre of Brussels, back on the detested cobble stones, into the spectacular Grand Place, which I hardly noticed, and zigzagging from one cobbled street to the next until the final turn and the open space known as De Brouckere. The finishing sprint is not one of my strongest points and in fact I was overtaken by several runners here, but it's not really important - a great winning sprint earns you three or four positions (to place in 1324th instead of 1329th place out of 8000) and you gain maybe 5 to 10 seconds, but it leaves you half dead. I was happy enough with my solid effort spread throughout the 21 km.
I finished in 1h41:55, in 1374th position out of 7874, at an average pace of 4:50 minutes per km overall. My 10 km split was 48:35, one and a half seconds per kilometre slower than the overall pace.
I've resigned myself to the inevitable. I'm slowing down at roughly one minute per year but at 53 I'm still placing much higher than midpoint in the overall classification. This was my favourite type of performance - the first section at a moderate pace which helps preserve energy for a strong second half - well executed.
As I remarked on Facebook, a one minute slowdown per year would mean a half marathon in 1h59 at the age of 70. I should be quite happy with that.
For all my effort, I got this nice medal, sore leg muscles for two days, and a happy conviction that I can look forward to doing well in other future events.
No comments:
Post a Comment