The racing year

With not too long left in the year it appears like my racing year is over. I’ve been absent from this blog for a good part of the year so I thought I’d recap on my key races from earlier in the year.

I started the year with a goal of going back to Red Rock to Coffs Jetty in April. A 45km race that I competed in 2015 and finished 2nd. (You can read a blog about that race here). In the lead up to that race I planned to train for the Port Macquarie Half Marathon with a goal if peaking at both.

In March I ran the Port Macquarie Half Marathon, I had trained well for this race and was confident going into the event. I ran with the group of 5-6 runners a few minutes behind a lone leader in this race until 16km when I missed a move and wasn’t able to go when the pace increased. This put me on the back foot for the final 5km but I was able to maintain my goal pace and run 1:21:50 for 5th place. It was a pleasing result, my fastest half marathon for over 10 years and proved to me that I still had some improvements left in me. I won my age group here also.

My training continued to be strong in the lead up to Red Rock to Coffs Jetty in April. I had a stressful week at work with a incident occurring that I needed to deal with but I got to the start line healthy and feeling fit and ready. A year earlier I had ran off course when leading and finished 2nd, I was hoping to go one better but knew I would need to run well for this to happen. I started with a group of runners and let two runners go ahead early. They were on a very good pace and I knew what awaited them, if they could continue at that pace they were better then me and they could have the prizes. I ran my own race but kept an eye on the leaders and runners around me, by 20km the leaders had come back and there was a group of about 5 in the lead pack, we ran together for about 10km before two runners ran off the front. At this point the last 10 km of this race is tough terrain and I knew I still needed to run my own race. I managed to over take one of the runners and finish for the second year in a row in 2nd place in 3:44. This was 13 minutes faster than my run a year earlier and a pleasing result. A second runners up thong to take home.

These were my two big goal races in the first half of 2016 and both were pleasing results.