Monaco Half Marathon
We ran the Monaco half marathin today. It was not one of my best races but then at 5km I knew I wasn't going to make a PB and hence didn't push that hard but not bad practice for the Milano Marathon in 3 weeks.
Normally this event is a marathon not a half-marathon and the course goes from Monaco all the way to Ventimiglia, Italy and back. However they are having French regional elections today and apparently having a marathon on French soil might have caused even fewer people to go and vote. Hence the course was changed to be just a half marathon, and one that was entirely withing the Principality of Monaco. Given that Monaco is less than 5km long and basically on the side of a cliff actually finding a 21.1km course was pretty good going so it would be churlish to complain about the (relatively minor in the grand scheme of things) ascents, but I will say that they certainly contributed to the fact that I didn't run my best time.
What also didn't help were the tunnels and tall buildings which caused my GPS to not work well - in particualar for some unknown reason it failed to note most of the first kilometer (it decided I wasn't moving) and hence both distance and time were off thereafter. It turns out that in races I really rely on checking my GPS to verifiy my pace and so when I can't trust it I tend to slack off now and again.
However the race was excellently organized and it was not a very large race - 619 finishers in the half marathon, about the same for the 10k - and there were no international superstar Kenyans there. Also it was quiet scenic and definitely fun to run part of the Grand Prix circuit so over all this is a race I'd recommend for people who want to have some fun. Indeed I suspect a lot of people did exactly that since - although there were a lot of French, Italians and Monagasques there were plenty of people from all over Europe as well - I saw Germans, Swiss, Poles, Hungarians and Romanians and according to the results PDF there were also Japanese, Americans, Finns and others.
Talking of results - I came 86th in a time of 1:29:25 (chip)/1:29:36 (gun). I was the first British person home and apart from the first 5km (20:04) I ran pretty consistently at 4:20-4:30 or so per km for the whole race. This is pretty much exactly the pace I want for Milano - though there I have to maintain it for another 21km. I think I can do that, especially since in Milan I do not expect my watch to misbehave quite so much - at one point it claimed I was at an altitude of -35m which was clearly wrong
Normally this event is a marathon not a half-marathon and the course goes from Monaco all the way to Ventimiglia, Italy and back. However they are having French regional elections today and apparently having a marathon on French soil might have caused even fewer people to go and vote. Hence the course was changed to be just a half marathon, and one that was entirely withing the Principality of Monaco. Given that Monaco is less than 5km long and basically on the side of a cliff actually finding a 21.1km course was pretty good going so it would be churlish to complain about the (relatively minor in the grand scheme of things) ascents, but I will say that they certainly contributed to the fact that I didn't run my best time.
What also didn't help were the tunnels and tall buildings which caused my GPS to not work well - in particualar for some unknown reason it failed to note most of the first kilometer (it decided I wasn't moving) and hence both distance and time were off thereafter. It turns out that in races I really rely on checking my GPS to verifiy my pace and so when I can't trust it I tend to slack off now and again.
However the race was excellently organized and it was not a very large race - 619 finishers in the half marathon, about the same for the 10k - and there were no international superstar Kenyans there. Also it was quiet scenic and definitely fun to run part of the Grand Prix circuit so over all this is a race I'd recommend for people who want to have some fun. Indeed I suspect a lot of people did exactly that since - although there were a lot of French, Italians and Monagasques there were plenty of people from all over Europe as well - I saw Germans, Swiss, Poles, Hungarians and Romanians and according to the results PDF there were also Japanese, Americans, Finns and others.
Talking of results - I came 86th in a time of 1:29:25 (chip)/1:29:36 (gun). I was the first British person home and apart from the first 5km (20:04) I ran pretty consistently at 4:20-4:30 or so per km for the whole race. This is pretty much exactly the pace I want for Milano - though there I have to maintain it for another 21km. I think I can do that, especially since in Milan I do not expect my watch to misbehave quite so much - at one point it claimed I was at an altitude of -35m which was clearly wrong