After breaking my ribs just before Coast to Coast I decided to change my focus for the rest of year and do a few running events. The first event I signed up for was the Captain Cook's Landing run, a 26km run along the stunning Queen Charlotte track from Camp Bay to Ship Cove. Its a race of 2 halves, with the first half being reasonably flat, and the second half including 2 reasonable sized hills to make a total elevation of around 800m (some watches were saying as high as 1200m).
The event had a staggered start based on your half marathon time, which considering I've never done a half marathon, I made a guess based on what my dad did a few years ago (1.41). This placed me in the 11th start wave out of 13, my dad was in start wave 10.
Waiting around at the start was the worst part of the whole event, with my group starting an hour and a half after the first one. I had no nerves, I was just eager to finally race again. My game plan was to attack the first half to cover off some distance as fast as possible and then suffer through the climbs where the overall speed would be lower anyway with a hill that would be walked by pretty much everyone due to the steepness. My dad started 5 minutes in front of me which provided further motivation to push hard to pass him as soon as possible.
As soon as I started, my worries of leaving my legs behind at home disappeared, and I felt really good over the first half, catching my dad just before 10km and quickly pulling away from him (I may have surged slightly just to discourage him from trying to stick with me). Going into the second hilly half, my legs started to feel the effects of pushing hard and I had to dig fairly deep to keep pushing to the end.
In the end I crossed the line in 2:33:47, around 15 minutes off a podium spot (2nd & 3rd were 1 second apart), a little bit slower than I had hoped for but still a lot better than I would have done a few months ago. As a bonus I also beat my dad by around 15 minutes which is always nice to achieve in a discipline where he still usually holds an edge over on me.
My next running event is the sky rock run marathon in November with around 3600m of climbing, which after this race, I'm not particularly looking forward to!
The event had a staggered start based on your half marathon time, which considering I've never done a half marathon, I made a guess based on what my dad did a few years ago (1.41). This placed me in the 11th start wave out of 13, my dad was in start wave 10.
As soon as I started, my worries of leaving my legs behind at home disappeared, and I felt really good over the first half, catching my dad just before 10km and quickly pulling away from him (I may have surged slightly just to discourage him from trying to stick with me). Going into the second hilly half, my legs started to feel the effects of pushing hard and I had to dig fairly deep to keep pushing to the end.
In the end I crossed the line in 2:33:47, around 15 minutes off a podium spot (2nd & 3rd were 1 second apart), a little bit slower than I had hoped for but still a lot better than I would have done a few months ago. As a bonus I also beat my dad by around 15 minutes which is always nice to achieve in a discipline where he still usually holds an edge over on me.
My next running event is the sky rock run marathon in November with around 3600m of climbing, which after this race, I'm not particularly looking forward to!
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