I've had some good results in various 10-15 kilometre races in the lead up, but hadn't run a half marathon for two years, and my personal best was still 1:23:21 from 2015.
Similar to the Gold Coast preparation I ran a 13.5 kilometre training session at half marathon pace two weeks out, but probably pushed a bit too hard so my legs were just really sore every day afterwards. I eventually had to stop running on Tuesday of race week to make sure I was recovered as much as possible. I only did a half walk and jog at parkrun the day before the race, but somehow that triggered some recurring back pain so I could not bend over at all afterwards.
On to race day, got up at about 6:10am, had some food, then drove in to the city arriving about 7:10am. My warm up just consisted of walking down to the start line for about 20 minutes, as the 10 kilometre race was starting. I managed to get into the front row on the outside half of the road after they had all gone through.
I didn't get swamped by people running too fast off the line, so was able to ease into the race after the first hill going up to Flinders Street station. Then it was all slightly downhill along St Kilda Road for about five kilometres. I was averaging low 3:50/km which was my goal, but felt slightly harder than I was hoping for. I skipped the first drinks station on the way down, but got water at the the rest.
Near the half way point around Albert Park I started to feel a bit sore around the right hip, followed by right thigh a bit later. Gradually I was having to work a bit harder each kilometre but still staying under 4:00/km after getting out of Albert Park and back to St Kilda Road.
This was the section I was a bit worried about as there was a bit of uphill, and going into a bit of wind as well. I tried to balance the effort with a bit of recovery on the flatter sections, which seemed to help. I got overtaken by a few of the elite marathon runners along the way.
I was feeling surprisingly well reaching the tunnel under the Arts Centre, but then suddenly felt really bad coming out at the other side, before even reaching the uphill next to The Tan. I'm not sure what it was, but I almost had to really back off the pace, before managing to work through the pain and I was feeling alright again. I did have a single outlier kilometre at 4:10 but that may have been due to the tunnel. I think almost every year previously I've hit the limit just a bit earlier at the National Gallery, so it's something to try and remember for next time.
I got over the final challenge of the bridge to the MCG, and thought I was on for a good time close to 1:22:00, but my Garmin had deceived me as it was 200 metres ahead of the actual race distance, so sadly I was closer to 1:23:00 in the end, but managed to beat my previous best by about 30 seconds still and just missed the top 100.
Overall a good result since I hadn't run the distance in so long, I probably ran with a bit too much focus on my goal time than running to a slightly more comfortable speed, which almost went bad in the end, but just managed to hang on. Since the race my legs have been quite sore for at least three days, so I won't be planning another half marathon for a while I think.
