Sunday 14 May 2006

Closing the Gap

Posted by speedygeoff on Sunday, May 14, 2006 with
Today's Canberra Half Marathon has come and gone with some quite good times and some not-quite-as-good times on a beautiful autumn day - actually I would have preferred fog and frost at the start to the clear sunshine, but I am sure the nice weather brought the runners out.

An off day
Everyone wants to know the result of the race-off between yours truly and the Speedy Geese Team. Hardly a fair race; both the team and I were handicapped and had off days. I ended up running SLOWER than I ran at Weston Creek; marginally so anyway. My splits (at EXACTLY the half way mark, and at the finish) were 45:00 and 49:20. I ran around the 4:15 per km target pace to about 15km, and then my back seized up. I had strained it badly a week ago doing hip flexor exercises (Southy please note) and had done little or no running since that happened. I felt reasonably OK for the first 15 km but the final 6km were excruciating and I was forced to jog, at times a fast jog and at other times close to stopping.

The geese are closing the gap
Speedy Geese suffered their first blow when the chief goose went home sick, and the second as the other two members discovered they had to run 10.5km each instead of 7km. The splits for the two runners were 46:20 and about 49:50. The good news is they ended up FASTER than the time the Speedy Geese ran at Weston Creek; marginally so anyway. The other bit of good news is they were the first two-person team to finish. They came in after me by just under two minutes.

Aki to Zel
Official results will appear soon. Some people, ranging from Aki to Zel, ran massive PBs. I will publish full Team Moore results when available.

Everyone has an off day; seems like mothers' day 2006 is best forgotten for some of us. Others will long remember it as a stepping stone to greater things.