Sydney running festival half- marathon

I decided to run this half- marathon (21.1km!) after doing the 14km City to Surf without too much of a problem. It was good that it got me getting fit and running- I don't think I've been for a run since! I also discovered there are good running tracks people have mapped on www.mapmyrun.com and www.sydneystriders.org.au. The race started at Milson's Point at 6:20am. It was good because there wasn't that many people, well, compared to City 2 Surf and I could park near the area and walk to the start. There was no drinking water that I could see at the start line, but it only took 15 minutes to wait in the line for the toilet.

I aimed to keep a constant pace to finish in 2hrs 15 minutes.

Start- 5km I crossed the start line about 3 minutes after the gun went off. I started running across the bridge. I could see a guy from Sydney Striders with a flag that said 2 hours that you can follow if you want, which I thought was a good idea. I wouldn't be able to keep up though. Pretty comfortable for the first 4km, enjoying the views.

5-10km- kept running and realised it would be a challenging pace to keep up the pace. I was generally 30 seconds within my split times for each kilometre. I could see the race leaders had turned around and were running back and it was good to see them and cheer them on.

10- 15km- I was okay until about km 15 when I touched the psychological barrier of running further than I had before in a race! I had thoughts of 'when will this end' and where I stopped running for a few of steps a couple of times, that is other than my drink breaks which I walked through. I started getting a bit behind on my split times around km 14-15 which got me down a bit.

15- 21km- I felt a bit of pain in the knees at km 15- 16 but I managed to ignore it after that. I wasted a bit of time having an energy gel and drinking a lot of water with it. At least I didn't fell so hungry after I ate it. I felt like ran the last 4 kilometres pretty hard but I don't think I actually went much faster. My heart rate sure went up. I was pretty happy when I got to the wharfs around the Rocks and happier when I saw the Opera house. Running on the planks of wood outside the Park Hyatt hurt my legs. I wasn't sure whether I would finish on my targeted time. I did eventually finish within the time I aimed for 2:14:12 which I was pleased with.

Then I got home and thankfully made it on time to my grandma's 91st birthday lunch at 11:30!