Christchurch Marathon 2008Christchurch Marathon 2008

Posted June 3rd, 2008 in Running

I ran the SBS Christchurch Marathon 2008 on Sunday June 1st 2008. This post is off topic for this blog but covers my time, splits etc for my own future reference.

This is my second Marathon to date, the first being the Auckland Marathon in 2007. I had issues with my first marathon because I set off too fast and paid for it in the last few kilometers slowing down to a crawl and having to stop and stretch for a bit towards the end. My main goal with this marathon was to run it without stopping and ideally not slowing down, by maintaining an even pace throughout the marathon.

With this goal in mind, my target time was to get under 3h40, which means a 5:13 per kilometer pace. I managed to be pretty much on target at the half way point, just 33 seconds behind, but still had a bit of a slow down issue towards the end (athough nowhere near as bad as in my first marathon) and finished in the time of 3:49:20

Summary

The Christchurch Marathon starts at 9am between the Town Hall and Christchurch Convention Center. There was the usual slow start as thousands of people set off for the 10k, half marathon and marathon runs. We were all supposed to start near flags marked with planned finishing times but I made the mistake of actually standing near mine instead of slightly ahead, so for the first three kilometers I had issues trying to get around people who weren't quite at the pace I wanted to run at. I managed to get past them and into my goal per km pace after that.

I had support from Ces, my aunt's husband, who cycled around after me for a couple of kilometers in the first half and most of the way in the second half, refilling my water bottle and keeping me going when the going got hard towards the end.

The Christchurch Marathon is two loops of the half marathon course. My family were waiting to cheer me on at the half way point which added a great boost.

Everything was going well until about the 30th kilometer when I started slowing down quite a bit. I wasn't too bothered by this because although my aim was a 3h40 time my main goal was to finish without having to stop or slow down too much. Once I'd started to slow down I was trying to keep it under 5:30 pace and then under 6:00 pace but unfortunately dropped below 6:00 pace towards the end.

Kilometers 39 and 40 were the hardest, with me wondering what on earth I was doing running marathons, and the 41 kilometer mark seemed like forever to arrive. Once I passed it I said to Ces "right" and managed to push the pace up a bit. As I came to the end I managed to pick the pace up another notch and keep getting faster until I crossed the finish line. It felt like a sprint but in reality I only got it up to about 5:20 pace as I crossed the line.

And wow, the feeling of finishing is just so overwhelming! My doubts from kms 39 and 40 were gone and I felt ecstatic. The only disappointment was they don't give out medals at Christchurch. Not fair!

A couple of final points for future reference. I had 2 x EAS gels during the race (that's 4 doses) at something like 5km, 10km, 25km, 30km, although I'm not 100% certain of those markers. I also managed to eat 3 small pieces from a EAS energy bar between the first two shots and the second two. I finished feeling really hungry so for next time I need to try to eat more during the run as hard as that is. I drank only water for the first half and then Ces kept refilling my water bottle with some sort of extremely watered down replacement fluid.

Comparison to Marathon #1

My first marathon was Auckland in 2007 which I did in 3:38:17. I set off too quickly and paid for it towards the end, getting really sore knees, having to stop and stretch and slowing right down to a crawl. I trained with longer long training runs this time around and a much slower starting pace. Although I still slowed down considerably this time it was nowhere near as bad as last time and I ended up finishing only 1:03 slower than the last time. Although it was slightly slower this was a much better run but there's still a lot of room for improvement and more long distance training.

Splits

I ran the first half in 1:50:33 and the second half in 1:58:47

I ran the first 14km in 1:13:28, the second 14km in 1:13:35 and last 14.2km in 1:22:17

Per kilometer splits

My per-kilometer splits are listed below and are taken from my Garmin Forerunner 201, which is a GPS for running/biking. I started off slower than my target pace due to the large number of people trying to cram into a relatively narrow course and having difficulties getting around them. I then managed to keep pretty much within target pace until about kilometer 30 when I started getting progressively slower. The psycological boost at the end saw me pick up the pace for the last 1.2km and I crossed the finish line in as much as a sprint as I could muster at the end.

  KM Time Total Time
1 5:24 0:05:24
2 5:29 0:10:53
3 5:24 0:16:17
4 5:15 0:21:32
5 5:16 0:26:48
6 5:13 0:32:01
7 5:09 0:37:10
8 5:12 0:42:22
9 5:10 0:47:32
10 5:16 0:52:48
11 5:07 0:57:55
12 5:05 1:03:00
13 5:16 1:08:16
14 5:12 1:13:28
15 5:17 1:18:45
16 5:12 1:23:57
17 5:08 1:29:05
18 5:12 1:34:17
19 5:22 1:39:39
20 5:09 1:44:48
21 5:11 1:49:59
22 5:07 1:55:06
23 5:32 2:00:38
24 5:10 2:05:48
25 5:24 2:11:12
26 5:01 2:16:13
27 5:19 2:21:32
28 5:31 2:27:03
29 5:12 2:32:15
30 5:28 2:37:43
31 5:29 2:43:12
32 5:36 2:48:48
33 5:34 2:54:22
34 5:33 2:59:55
35 5:40 3:05:35
36 5:44 3:11:19
37 5:49 3:17:08
38 5:50 3:22:58
39 6:09 3:29:07
40 6:23 3:35:30
41 6:48 3:42:18
42 5:58 3:48:16
43 1:04 3:49:20

Conclusion

I may need to drop my target pace for the 1st 30km in my next marathon to about 5:20 and then see how I go. There was a definite improvement between this marathon and the last because I didn't slow down anywhere nearly as much as in the last one, although overall my race time wasn't quite as good as last time. I probably also need to try to get more energy gels / food into my system as that may help as well. And some more long long runs in training.

Next race

My next race is on June 29th: the 2nd Sri Chinmoy Domain Half Marathon for 2008. My next marathon will be Auckland on November 2nd. I had thought about doing The Legend marathon this year but given the hard uphill course I'll leave that one for another year once I'm a bit more experienced at marathon running.

Recent posts: