Although it started out as my second choice (to the Whangamata Half Marathon), it really made perfect sense to run the Onehunga Half Marathon – it was 5 weeks out from the Auckland Marathon, it was close to home and I’d run on various parts of the course before so I knew a little bit about what to expect.

In terms of training, like everything I wish I had more time to fit a bit extra in, but I had managed to get the most important training runs/workouts in, and due to my Blood Lactate Testing I knew where I was at in terms of ability and pace, so I could build a pacing strategy and be confident that I could keep to it.

My ideal pacing was 5:00 a km, sticking to this for the first 7-10 km and then slowly going to 5:15 as needed as the 21.09kms went on. I managed to keep to this almost to the second for the first third of the race, with a time of 34:59 over the first 7km, and all but 2 of my splits being within 10 seconds of the 5:00 target pace, with most of them being within 5 seconds of it. My fastest split was 4:50, which happened on the second to last km of the event!

My official time was 1:47:07, making my average pace 5:05 minutes a km, perfectly on target! Going into the 17th/18th kms, just before I started to pick up the pace because the finish was almost in sight, I felt like I did after 5kms – which is promising for coping with the longer distances building up to the Auckland Marathon in 5 weeks time. This was in part due to proper hydration – I carried my own water bottles on a running belt so I was able to overtake a few people as they stopped to have a drink at the water stations, and due to the energy gel from my friends at Fuel Me

Taking a closer look at this pacing, it looks a bit more erratic, but that’s only because it’s zoomed in so much! Looking past the Target timing line, my actual pace line seems pretty constant throughout the race, meaning that I was (as predicted and planned for) running at a pace below my Lactate Shuttle Overload point/pace, and my endurance was good enough to complete the 21.09 kms event distance.

All series on a given axis must be of the same data type×
So where do we go from here with only 5 weeks left until I’m running double the distance? Well, this is why I originally wanted to run the Whangamata Half Marathon – it would give me a little more time to prepare for double the distance. An easier week follows (as with any event/race where you go hard), then it’s straight back into it. Over the next 3 weeks I’ll be doing one training run on the North Shore, and one on Tamaki Drive, building up my long runs to around 40kms, before the taper starts 14-10 days before the event.

If it goes as well as this event, then it will be easy! 😉

For a bit more info on pacing – including some things from this event (and to learn what ‘Macho Pacing’ is), see my post on pacing