Royal Parks Half Marathon 2009
The autumn fairy tale continues. My last start on Sunday in the Royal Parks half marathon was a total success. I was planning to take it easy which certainly wasn’t the case as I pushed hard enough to take a solid bite out of my half marathon PB. I finished in 1h 42m 18s that is a time I hasn’t even dreamed about as it is 16min faster than my result from Royal Parks Half 2008, last year and 5min faster than in Lisbon in March this year.
The weather was I could say perfect for running. I also started in the green, second wave of runners (1h30m-1h45min). Combination of those two factors made it a nice task to control the race and keep my target pace of 4m55s/km, here and there saving couple of seconds per kilometer. As people around me were as fast or faster than me there was no problem with overtaking in the crowd, water was served in bottles (!) so the waste of time was negligible.
It is one of those races I will try doing every year, really enjoyable in Hyde Park were I do my longer training runs anyway, feels like the home race. Plus I am really starting to like half marathon distance.
Unfortunately I am carrying a knee injury now I am not sure if I can recover before the Frankfurt Marathon on Sunday next week. Chances are 50/50, I couldn’t be able do it today for sure.
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