Wellington half

Today I ran in the Wellington Half Marathon. I mentioned that I was signed up in my post about the last half marathon I ran back in April. Unlike that race, which was all pretty last minute, I've had a couple of months to train.


The course was really nice and flat. It started at the Westpac Stadium, where incidentally I'd been the evening before to watch the Hurricanes (Wellington Super 15 rugby team) get beaten by the Crusaders. After heading through the centre of town, the route is around several bays out to the airport and then it looped straight back. This is the road I've done most of my training on, so I knew what to expect.

As we're now in winter I also had an idea what to expect weather-wise, and Wellington didn't disappoint. It was raining pretty heavily when we started, luckily that eased off for most of the race. There was a strong north-westerly, so as I came round a couple of the headlands it was head down and dig-in to keep moving forwards.


I'd decided to aim for a time of 1 hour 40, but wasn't sure if that was going to happen given the weather. In fact, I managed to get round in 1 hour 38 mins. Full stats on the race site. I ran with a pace team for about two-thirds of the distance and that definitely made it easier to keep on track.


Probably through a combination of the faster pace and the weather, it was a much tougher run than in April. As I type this I'm not feeling too bad, but will have to wait and see how mobile I am tomorrow. Really glad I managed my target time as that made the effort worthwhile.


Next decision is when/if to enter another race.