DRHM 2018 (A.K.A Yay!! PB)

Yay!!! PB!!!

Was riding my runner's high all day on Sunday singing this in my head. It was a good event and a great run. 

The event like every year was organized well. No hiccups anywhere along the way. Flag off was held on the dot, the aid stations were well stocked, the route was marshaled well, there were clear instructions at ever U turn and every diversion, littering was closely monitored and well handled. All in all a well-run event.

I was praying for good weather and I wasn't too disappointed. For about an hour into the run, the weather was excellent. In fact it was so good that I might have gone out a bit too fast at the start. The plan was to hold a steady pace of 6'20 - 6'25" throughout the run. I reached the first timing mat (4.75 K) at a pace of about 6'10" and finished my first 7K in about 44 minutes (1 minute quicker than planned). The humidity set in by the time I was at 11K. Still managed to finish the second 7K within my goal time of 1:30. During the last 7K however, I found it very tough to hold on to the pace.  The higher humidity meant slowing down more often to hydrate. At 2 hours, I had reached 18.2K and knew fully well that I wouldn't be able to cover the balance 2.9K to the finish point in 15 minutes. Even 20 minutes to cover that last bit of distance seemed like a tough ask. At that point, I suffered through a few moments thinking that I wouldn't make PB. Shrugged it off and plodded along.

I reached the 20.1K mark at 2:14. Something clicked inside my head at that point. If I could do the last kilometer in about 6 minutes, I could still make PB. Somehow gathered together the last remaining scattered bits of energy, picked up the pace and made it to the finish line in 2:19:48. Phew! PB. All smiles now. 11th Half Marathon done!

Race Day Already...

10 weeks just flew by. And here I am, just a few more hours to Race Day, reviewing my race plan, the route and what not.

My training was less than desirable. Missed a couple of weeks due to falling ill, had a little mishap with the ankle just 3 weeks ago, had to travel in between.... These are of course the star contributors to the less-than-satisfactory training. The not so stellar reasons of late nights, hitting the snooze button too often and work-got-in-the-way did also make their small contributions.

The many, many blank spots, red crosses and the alarming lack of green ticks not withstanding, I feel race ready. (I can't explain it). I am not sure if this is a false sense of confidence in my running abilities or plain stupidity, but I am taking on this race in a come-on-2:15-we-got-this kinda spirit... :)

And why not? Every race day is different. I've tackled running events where I was fully prepared, trained vigorously and followed all the rules only to have horrible weather or niggling injuries completely ruin all pace plans and targets. I've also had races that turned out to be the strongest and best races despite not being appropriately prepped. So who knows what tomorrow might be like. I'm going to go out there, enjoy my run and give that elusive 2:15 my best shot!!