The Huntly Half

As a race that I'd never run, the Huntly Half Marathon was mainly in my imagination till this morning. It had an evocative presence even from the assonance in its name. Its reputation was a fast, flat half marathon where PBs were made. Through the wonders of the running app, Strava, every year I could see others going down and running it with fast times; running great, John Walker, had won it several times.

I cannot think of a year, though, that I planned to run it. It always clashed a bit with other plans and ideas, or simply didn't occur to me. As alluded to in previous blogs, even my entry this morning was a bit of a side project. I just wanted a race three weeks before the marathon to estimate my fitness and pace. Also, I did want to see whether my 1:28:28 at Waterfront was really the best I could do, or whether my hamstring concerns had impacted it. 

My training since Waterfront had been really good right up to this past week, when weather, a family health issue and general bad timing foiled my planned lead-in. Yesterday, I switched to my racing shoes on a "shake-out run" (the run you do the day before an event to keep things loose) but about 6km in my left calf became unusually tight. I ran on and started feeling the starting of pain and pulled the plug. This was not what I wanted the day before an event. I walked and rubbed it. Stretching seemed to make things worse so I just walked for about 20 minutes. I thought for a bit before deciding I'd try and run home. The whole way the calf was tight and on a few strides again I felt pain but not consistent pain. I threw in some pace and did not feel any worsening. I finally completed the test by running up the hill home and got in without trouble. Generally after symptoms like this, you'd have a day or three off to let things settle but with everything set to race in the morning it became a dilemma. In the end I decided to go down to Huntly and run, but with a mind that if it got sore I'd pull the plug and walk back. I decided not to wear the racing shoes and went with standard training shoes. These days, shoes can be the difference between a good run, a great run and a PB so carbon plated shoes are now de rigor, such as my racing shoes that I ran at the Waterfront Half. Here, I was going to run in conventional shoes.

I got there early and this is the best way to race. You have a double-hit of some portaloo action; you have your coffee; do a jog with a few strides; do general stretching and make your way to the start chute without trouble. And it was a great day to do so. There was some morning fog and an apparent overnight temperature of 2 degrees, but when I got there it was comfortable with the morning sun beaming down. In contrast to Auckland half marathons that have you starting 8am at the latest, Huntly started at 9am which was plenty of time for people to travel in to run and for the day to begin. My warm-up runs made me know that I'd be feeling the calf on the run, and when I tried pace I didn't feel like I was able to crank up speed.

Then a misfiring horn squealed and we were off. Gladly I settled into a pace but by the 4km mark, I realised, again, that my watch was not reporting pace correctly. I had thought I had been going a touch too slow but hadn't minded doing so in the early kilometres. But when I saw the marker and divided my time by four, I was at goal pace, or slightly faster. By the fifth kilometre, I casually inquired about the paces on all of the runners that were in our pack and got a multitude of answers. Fortunately, this rate had markers reliably every kilometre and visible so I tracked myself mainly through mathematics. My calf was tight and present in every step, as expected but did not hurt, even at what was a fast pace for me. 

With the early jockeying for position out of the way, the packs and bursts therefrom became the rhythm of the race. My early pack fractured with someone I called Orange Guy burst forward and became a perpetual mark. Later from our pack, Frontrunner (which was written across the top of the back of his shirt) also broke, and then it was a small pack with me at the front. No one particularly pushed, and I was on pace. The plan is always to run your plan and then reel in runners ahead who did not plan well for their ability. And it happened first with Frontrunner. He had a very strong pace from about 4km-9km and then we just mobbed him. The course was an "out-and-back" with a turn at the halfway mark. I felt myself breaking away from my own pack in the kilometres before the turn and when I made it, I realised I had made a reasonable gap indeed and was closer to the Orange Guy than I was to them. I locked in a faster pace and surprisingly Orange Guy must have faded because within a minute I'd passed him, but still on my own. New marks were ahead, "Blackman" (at a distance he could only be a colour) and a female runner who was with him to form a minipack. 

I might have thought I was going fast but another runner, possibly a later starter, "Wanganui", burst past me in a rush to finish. He passed the my two new marks but strangely seem to have slowed down to around my pace because he never really left my sight, about 100m ahead. The female runner stopped all together to take a gel. She must have been struggling and wanted some magic to get her groove back. The sugar from a gel takes quite some time to get into the system. Either way, I passed her in a blink and not long after passed Blackman. I trailed Wanganui for a while, around the same time I felt myself struggle a bit to maintain my pace and around the 19km mark, heard footfalls behind me. My tail kept with me before hitting the gas around the 20km. I tried unsuccessfully to stay with him but that pumped up my pace for the final stretch that brought me across the finishing mats at 1:27:23, a 1:05 improvement on Waterfront. 

I went through the finish line and removed my tracking tag from my show, and soon as I rose from my crouch, my calf turned to stone. The runner who blew through finish line at 15km/hr one moment, limped slowly to collect his bag the next. Compared to Waterfront I held my speed for much longer and the pace fade was only a small loss of time. I won't be doing another half for quite some time as the two full marathons take precedence. 

As for my calf, I think it's a temporary thing and I hope with rest and some treatment it resolves itself. It is a wonder that something that feels so debilitating one day cannot impact much a lifetime best performance the next day. I'm glad though. It is one for the scrapbook.