My A race, the Toda Half Marathon (just north of Tokyo), was on Sunday, which was a perfect day for running, about 15°C, sunny and no wind. I was targeting 1:35, which is 4:30 per k. Actually, I wanted to run 4:30 pace and then speed up to about 4:20s for the last 6k, and that's exactly what I did.
Felt pretty comfortable at 4:30, within 4 seconds either way. There's a turnaround at 15k and I like to pick up the pace there. Last year I actually slowed from there, but this time the legs felt ok, so I sped up a bit: 4:19/24/19/22/26 and 4:44 for 1.1, which is 4:18/k - managed to kick in slightly.
That was good enough for 4th place in the 60s age group — no 70s! — an oversight which I urged the organizers to remedy. (I urged that last year also, but maybe they'll finally pay attention.)
Prizes went down to 6th, so I got a nice shoe bag.
It was a fun day, the club had 20 people there, most in the half, some in the 10k, and everyone did quite well, with a few others winning prizes.
There were 2,800 people in the Half (283 in men's 60s), so a decent-sized race. And 1,700 in the 10K.
Of course, compared to 70-year-old Gene Dykes, who recently ran a 1:22 half, 1:34 is, well, good but not great. Gene apparently does quite a bit of overdistance, even 50k and over ultras, so maybe increasing my weekly long run to 24k and then 30k will put more strength back in my legs. Of course, I used to do that, so I think I should go back to that.
Since I don't like winter races, I won't run another half until maybe April, so let's see what happens then.
Dec. 2nd I'll run a 7.4k leg on an ekiden team, then no races for 4 months.
Hope to be in Singapore for part of the winter, visiting my daughter.
Cheers!
10 hours ago
Good result Bob but those 10 year and more age-groups should be banned! How hard is it to have 5-years all the way to 95? It looks like Gene does fewer ultras than he used to, but he still does them! The long 20-30k workouts with sections at a fast pace are impressive.
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