Run 45. The Melbourne Manflu Half Marathon. 13/10/2019.
The perfect lead into a proper half marathon is to taper. So an 8 day break is ideal, accept the reason for my break was a bad cold – or man flu. And whilst I thought I wasn’t too bad as I stood on the start line, I soon realised that I was kidding myself. I usually hit a heart rate of 160 in the last 3km if I am pushing it, but today the 160 came in the first 2km and that was whilst still running in the starting pack at nearly 6 minutes per km.
Having started at the back of the pack I knew the starting kms would be slow. Finally it opened up and we could start to stretch out but then without warning we hit a bottleneck at Domain Rd roadworks. Very unprofessional to include a bottleneck like that in a race with such a profile – just disappointing. Having come to a stop and then walking through this bit, we got going again. May as well have run the half marathon through the city at peak hour – same effect.
Tried to control my heart rate after that – but gave up when it hit 170. Great atmosphere but slow going. Felt OK at the early on but the last 20.5km were ordinary.
Having run 44 half marathons before this one, at least I got a finisher medal and a third of a banana. Not the experience that I was hoping for – I think I prefer to run my own courses.
So on a weekend that saw Eliud Kipchoge break the 2 hour marathon, I broke 2 hours for the half. Same, same but different.
My Three Learnings
A heavy cold is not good prep for a half marathon.
Running through a bottleneck with 11,000 other runners is not good.
Illness causes your heart rate to blow out very quickly.