I write this with much hesitation as I am a superstitious person, and rightly so. In March I blogged about my running renaissance and promptly sprained an ankle. But I would like to risk it all and write about where things stand. Since I'm a data and tracking guy, I'll furnish this with graphics!
So in was the start of Dec 2019 when, after my best running year, I went to my bogey-event, the Omaha Half, where it perpetuated the reason for it being a bogey event: I slipped on a boardwalk, bruised myself, still ran and completed the event, but it left me with issues that took months to recover from. After some physio and then some run/walks during the 2020 lockdown, eventually I got back to some running, but was always hampered by niggles and issues.
In the end, I only ran a single half marathon that year and a handful of 10k events. In November I strained my hamstring and again had physio and light exercise. But over the summer holidays and on our South Island trip, I started running again and even though at first the hamstring was still noticeable, its irritation got less as I ran more. And as you'll see below, there was a beautiful rise in mileage from Jan 2021 until the ankle sprain "cliff" happened. But I pushed to keep moving and running to recover from it, and again there is a gentle rise until the present day.
100km is the sweet spot for training where improvements are apparent and in the last five weeks I've plateaued my mileage there. There have been two races recently, one two weeks ago and one today. Today's Ōrewa Half Marathon was a big test whether things were moving forward.
The weather forecast for Sunday had been a roulette wheel of possibilities, every day I would check and get a different colour, a different chance of rain. Last night it rained. In the morning in rained, but in the end the needle fell on "extraordinarily windy". It is possibly the strongest wind I've run in, let alone raced in. The course was two laps around the Millwater Estuary, going out you were running with the wind; on the homeward leg, and especially the final stretch was near the beach without protection going straight into the buffeting wind. It was funny to start off with the wind so powerfully behind you and not knowing if you really are running too fast or being carried in the gusts. After my first kilometre, I actively slowed myself down.
Half marathons are tricky to pace. I had an idea of keeping pace between 4:40min/km and 4:50min/km, aiming for a 1 hour 40 minute result, with the chance of pushing it at the end if I was feeling strong, with a stretch goal of 1:38. The paces per kilometre for the first half were: 4:36, 4:40, 4:45, 4:30, 4:41, 4:58 (uphill), 4:12 (downhill), 4:34, 4:48 and 4:52. The slowest kilometre was all uphill and the last kilometre was all downhill but the rest were on target or below. And the last two were into that wind. I was a little perturbed that I had the 4:3X splits because they might feel them in the second half. The second half kilometre times, starting back with the wind, were 4:35, 4:35, 4:39, 4:30, 4:39, 5:00 (uphill), 4:24 (downhill), 4:35, 4:45 and 4:52.
Happily the second half was marginally faster than the first. Disappointingly, almost everyone's smartwatch including mine showed that the course was not 21.1 km, probably somewhere between 20.3-20.6 km. If I could keep running until 21.1km with my pace, I would have landed on about 1:38, so I'm pretty pleased. To be clear, and to put it into stark relief, my 2019 personal bests for a half marathon are 1:29 and 1:30 respectively, so there is still a lot of ground for progress.
The Ōrewa event was part of the the Run21 series, three events each with a half marathon. The other halves are in Onehunga in two weeks and Tāmaki River in September. Onehunga's is ridiculously close - not sure if I can really improve much but will go "all out" and try and break 1 hour 35 minutes. My big aim would be to get Tāmaki River's time down to 1 hour 30 minutes. That would put me right back to my personal best and mean that I would be well set for a tilt at the Auckland Marathon.
I'm leaving my entry to the marathon to when I can be sure I'll be healthy. It might surprise you, Dear Reader, that my sprained ankle is still not 100% back to normal. I have discomfort in two places because of it and also some issues as a result of the lack of flexibility that has remained despite the treatment and the regular activity. This might just take time - the nature of the partial tears, scar tissue and blood flow might mean there is still months to go. The key thing is that activity will help, and it has not stopped me running what I would want to be running.
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