Sri Chinmoy Auckland Domain Half Marathon 2008/1Sri Chinmoy Auckland Domain Half Marathon 2008/1

Posted May 25th, 2008 in Running

I ran the Sri Chinomy Half Marathon in the Auckland Domain this morning, knocking almost two full minutes off my previous personal best time with the time of 1:36:31. My previous personal best was 1:38:20, set exactly two years ago at my first Sri Chinmoy Half Marathon. This post looks at the event and my preparation so I have a record for future reference. This is completely off-topic from the rest of this blog so for my regular readers expecting LAMP related posts please bear with me and I will be back on topic tomorrow :)

The Sri Chinmoy Half Marathon in the Auckland Domain is a multi-lap course: there's a short 1km starting lap followed by 8 x 2.5km laps. It's marked with distance markers each kilometer and has water and powerade every 2.5kms. This was my first half marathon for the year (although I've run more in training on a number of occasions), 11th half marathon and 6th Sri Chinmoy to date.

I woke up at 5:50am and had a breakfast of porridge (3/4 cup) with chopped up almonds and milk and probably two glasses of water. I set off in the car at 6:50am and was in the domain at around 7:00am. After registering to get my race number I did a five or six minute slow warm up run and then had a quick pit stop. Back to the car, some stretches for two or three minutes, getting my gear ready, another little jog and another quick pit stop. I then went to the start line and waited for about 5 minutes. The race started at about 7:50am.

I ran the first kilometer unintentionally slow, but it was probably a good thing in the long run. After about one or two kilometers I started trailing a guy whose pace was about what I wanted to run (possibly slightly faster) and he was keeping it nice and consistant so my goal was to keep up with him. A couple of times I slipped away from him a bit but then always managed to catch up again. If it weren't for him acting as my pacer I probably wouldn't have finished in such a good time. He dropped out with 2 laps (5 kilometers) to go which made it a bit tougher and is reflected in my slightly slower splits after kilometer 16, shown further below.

Normally I drink water or powerade on each lap but decided not to take on as much this time. I drank water at km 6.0, 8.5 and 16.0, and powerade at km 11.0. I think I'll probably skip the powerade next time because it didn't go down all that well today and I could taste it in my throat for the next 5 or 6 kms.

My kilometer splits are as follows. I didn't hit the lap button on my watch after the 1st or 14th kilometers. I think the 1st kilometer took about 4:50 which means the 2nd one was about 4:30 and I then kept a fairly consistant pace throughout the rest of the run, mostlly between 4:29 and 4:36 per kilometer.

Km Time
0.00 - 2.00 9:22
2.00 - 3.00 4:33
3.00 - 4.00 4:29
4.00 - 5.00 4:31
5.00 - 6.00 4:30
6.00 - 7.00 4:35
7.00 - 8.00 4:32
8.00 - 9.00 4:30
9.00 - 10.00 4:31
10.00 - 11.00 4:34
11.00 - 12.00 4:36
12.00 - 13.00 4:32
13.00 - 15.00 9:19
15.00 - 16.00 4:38
16.00 - 17.00 4:43
17.00 - 18.00 4:37
18.00 - 19.00 4:35
19.00 - 20.00 4:36
20.00 - 21.00 4:21
21.00 - 21.09 0:20

In summary, I'm really happy with the result. Thanks to my pacer, I managed a fairly consistant pace throughout the whole race and cut almost two full minutes off the personal best I've been trying to beat for the past two years! Next event is the Christchurch Marathon next Sunday.

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