Central Coast Half Marathon

We arrived at the Central Coast on Saturday afternoon and met up with Jen, Ellie and Lorna at Memorial Park along with some of Jodie’s family to check out the festival for an hour or two. Tyler was enjoying all the attention from the girls whilst Isabel was running amok around the park and required some tag team chasing.

On Sunday I delayed arriving at the start due to the rain and cool wind first thing in the morning. The registration area was overflowing with Cool Runners (of whom there were far to many to remember and name), and the registration queue was long and wet as the rain fell down.

So many people showed up that they ran out of numbers, and the start was delayed by more than 20 minutes as everyone was processed. It was tough judging when they’d start would be so you could plan your warmup!

We started from under the bridge where everyone was sheltering and I was planning on running with nite_time_runner (NTR), Chunderbolt, and Becky O with a 1:50 time in mind. It was nice to run and chat with Becky and Benny for the first part of the race before they let NTR and myself go.

Neither of us had GPS or the like and only spotted a couple of distance markers so we didn’t have much idea of our pace, but on the way back we had an idea that we were closer to 1:45 pace. It was hard to get into a real rhythm for the first 2/3 of the race with all the puddle dodging (some looked fairly deep!) and runners coming the other way, although that was a boost in itself, with some good support along the way.

I carried a couple of gels, and had them at the 45 minute and 80 minute marks and had my fuel belt on with 2 x Gatorade and 2 x water which I refilled along the way from cups at the water stations.

It was great to run and chat with NTR for most of the race. We passed heaps of people on the way back and I don’t think we were passed at all after the turnaround. The time seemed to pass fairly quickly and we both seemed to be well on top of things as the words weren’t a struggle to get out. With about 4 or 5km to go the chat dropped off and we started to focus a bit more on running through the fatigue of the final few km. I found I was feeling good, and knowing the finish was close I got into a good rhythm and picked up the pace without going too far overboard (it was just a training run (race) after all). I was focussed on catching plu up ahead for at least a couple of km (which I was surprised at as he predicted a 2 hour run!) and was reeling him in slowly but surely. I passed him in the last km and felt I was running fairly strongly through to the finish in 1:45:17 by my watch.

That’s just 5 seconds slower than my Macleay River Half in June, which I’m very happy with given my recent injury, lack of preparation and 1:50 plan. Given how good I felt in the final few km, like at the Macleay River Half I think I could have pushed harder through the earlier stages of the race. I wish I had my splits now, as I’m sure the final few km would have been good, and must have made up for the early km that were closer to 5:20-5:30 minute kms (when we were Garmin assisted by Benny and Becky!). I’m happy that at the end I upped the intensity and was a bit more mentally focused for that last quarter. As I mentioned in my last post, the fastest time wasn’t my goal for this one – it was more for a little more race experience and to enjoy the run. So that was a success!

Nice to see that everyone else on the original 1:50 bus ended up with PB’s (along with so many others on the day)…well done :)

Because we started under the bridge the course was apparently a little bit short, but I figure that was offset by the disruption of queuing to cross one of the bridges near the start, some general congestion and all the puddle dodging!

By the time I got back for a shower, sat down for a moment then helped put the kids down for a sleep I was a bit late for the late CR breakfast. We didn’t end up getting home until 8.30 last night, and we all slept very well.

It’s now a day and a half later and I’m feeling good with nothing to complain about from the race at all. But that doesn’t mean I can’t complain about the swollen ankle I copped this morning after giving it a bit of a twist on a certain young lady’s toy this morning. At least it gives me a excuse to put my feet up for a couple of days (with an ice pack strapped on).

And here's the traditional post Half photo with Isabel...Tyler was in a nice warm place so he couldn't make it but sends his apologies. It's fitting that we're posing in front of a puddle!