From: steve common (stevenZ.common@wanadoo.fr.invalid)
Subject: [Race Report] Toulouse, France Half marathon (long-ish)
Date: 2001-10-21 11:49:14 PST

My home-town half-marathon finally took place this morning.

It was originally scheduled for the 23rd September but a 100-Tonne pile
of ammonium nitrate exploded on the 21st, killing 30, injuring around
3000 and generally blowing the shit out of a large part of the town.

Fortunately for us, another 300 tonnes of the stuff, stored just yards
away didn't go up too. Neither did the national explosives factory, just
100 yards over the river. The fact that the site's phosgene (mustard
gas) pipeline didn't break was nice too.

Apparently it was just a dumb, industrial accident and not what we had
all feared when it happened... Anyway, back to running.

This race was my principal target for the second half of the year. I
wanted to get under 1h30. My last half-marathon was a 1h31 in April.
Based on my recent 10k time, I was supposed to be able to do around 1h27
so that's what I aimed at. That works out at 4'07/km average pace.

Race strategy: first 3 kilometers at around marathon pace
(4'20"-ish/km), then <=4'10"/km til halfway and <4'05"/km til the end.

Weather was perfect: no cloud, no wind, about 12›C/53›F at race start
(9h30) and I'd slept really well and hadn't had to get up too early
(7am) as I live only about 15 minutes from the start line.

The race is a combined 10k and half-marathon and there were around 2000
starters. After a one minute silence for the accident victims, the
starter's pistol let us know that we could start a 20 second-long
shuffle to the start line, followed by another 100 meters of shuffle,
walk, trotting.

After a nice steady first kilometer I got tricked, as usual, into
running too fast, by all those 10km runners. The next two kms were
supposed to be steady too but were polished off in 4' apiece. I managed
to slow down a bit for 2 kms, but only to my second-half target speed.

I was actually feeling very, very good, and started dreaming about a
1h26 time. I had fallen asleep the night before, madly visualizing the
last kilometer, being done in 4'. Apparently I'd visualized too well
'cos I couldn't slow down :-)

I finally fell asleep during the 9th kilometer. Goodness knows what
happened, this must be what "losing focus" is all about :->
I can just remember catching up with an older girl who was finishing the
10k. She tagged onto me as I passed and I somehow got synchronized to
her. When we hit the 9km marker and I realized I'd done a 4'31" I woke
up with a bang.

For this last kilometer of the first loop, I speeded up a lot but
curiously it took even longer than the previous km, 4'36". Now I'm
certain I was running much quicker. No way was I going any slower.
Judging by the time for this "kilometer" section on the second loop, I'm
pretty sure that it was in fact about 80 meters too long...

Anyway. Something like 2/3 of the field had peeled off to the finish
line for the 10km and the major part of the rest of the race was done
solo and mostly on autopilot. There were very few spectators around
apart from at the finish.

One runner did pass me at around 14km and we exchanged places a couple
of times before he put 10 meters between us. I pulled back to within a
"length" (not saying of what :-) at the end of a half-hearted "sprint"
finish that wasn't really one.

I was very pleased with my form, I wasn't even tired at the end. And I
was of course happy to have achieved the year's target, but the fact is
it wasn't really "fun".

Am I getting too intellectual about the whole business or is it just
that I've finally got too used to doing this distance? Or is it the fact
that I know the town too well and didn't have any new sights to see? Or
because I'm always running alone instead of running slower to stay with
friends? Dunno...

Splits

km
0               0'18
1               4'28
2               missed
3               8'00
4               4'08
5               4'05
6               4'10
7               4'05
8               4'11
9               4'31    dreamer, you know you are a dreamer...
10              4'37    funny kilometer?
11              4'10
12              4'00
13              4'08
14              4'07
15              4'06
16              4'01
17              4'05
18              4'03
19              missed
20              8'04
21              missed
21.1    4'44 same funny kilometer here?

                1h27'44 (official 1h28'02)