ANOTHER HALF

After a hard week of training I lined up for another Half (Landmarks). Having only run 7km on Friday morning and taken Saturday off I was hoping for a faster time than last week. After a short warm up I pushed into the front of the almost 1500 runners and waited for the gun. Last week had been a controlled run and I had only really taken a little strain in the last 4km and I had put that down to the 2 hours the day before, so I was hopeful for a good run. I started with Charlies and the 2 of us settled into a good pace.
With the first 5km been mostly flat it wasn't hard work and I was happy with the time of 18:07. The next 5km is anything but flat as we cross the railway line and climb up the Rhodes Memorial through UCT. I didn't push the hills, and still found myself pulling ahead, but this is to be expected as this is home territory and we run up those hills all the time. Turning at 10km 38:46 (20:39) it was time to see if I could hold it together and maybe even pick up the pace... I did put in a 3:17 km down the hill, but the idea was to be able to run the flat km at sub 3:48 marathon pace. I reached 15km in 56:41 (17:55) and with the down hills over it was running that was needed to get me home. I was alone at this stage but I could hear the feet of the "enemy" behind me, so I had to push on. Pushing as hard as I could I was still run down and past by a Nedbank athlete. I hadn't slowed, but he was flying and my wings were cut so I just had to fight on to the end. I worked hard to the end to finish under 80 (79:29), but for that effort I would have like to have been 90sec faster...
My wife was still on the road, so still needing a couple of km for the week I headed out on the route to watch her come in. She was running like a star and leading her category!!!
one more week of hard work before I can afford to take to foot of the peddle and taper. Training for a marathon is hard work and I really nice the trails on the mountain, but road is road and I need a bit for Winelands marathon.