2XU Compression Run 2018 (21 km)
Last year I took a hiatus off half marathons, and originally I didn't intend to resume half marathons. However, two of my colleagues asked me whether to join 2XU Compression Run, and I said yes. So here is my race report.
First of all, congratulations to Kohan for completing his first half marathon. His timing is respectable.
I had a great run with an expected official net time of 01:50 or thereabouts. Weather was cool throughout the race. However, the actual distance appears to be about 1 km short of a standard half marathon. If this result is officially recognized, then this will erase 6 minutes off my previous personal best under the category "half marathon, but significantly shorter than 21.1 km", which incidentally was the 2014 edition of the 2XU Compression Run. Regardless, I had this post-run high which lasted for quite a few hours, and it felt good.
For this race, I was in the 4th wave. “Computer issues” resulted in a start delay of over 42 minutes for this wave. Some parts of the route was narrow, and felt like obstacle course with all those slow runners. I started to feel energy depletion starting from about two-thirds, so at that time I slowed down a bit. However, when I overtook the 02:40 pacers I knew I have hit my target net time of 02:00. I haven’t achieved this time in any of my training runs this year. So yeah.
Energy boost was in the form of Honey Stinger Energy Gel at 7 km and 14 km. This seem to work without triggering triggering gout like some of the other energy gels. Thanks Boey for recommending honey.
Update. Official net time is 01:49:34, ranked 401 out of 7031. The splits are given as:
9 km - 44:56
11 km - 01:05:01
First of all, congratulations to Kohan for completing his first half marathon. His timing is respectable.
I had a great run with an expected official net time of 01:50 or thereabouts. Weather was cool throughout the race. However, the actual distance appears to be about 1 km short of a standard half marathon. If this result is officially recognized, then this will erase 6 minutes off my previous personal best under the category "half marathon, but significantly shorter than 21.1 km", which incidentally was the 2014 edition of the 2XU Compression Run. Regardless, I had this post-run high which lasted for quite a few hours, and it felt good.
For this race, I was in the 4th wave. “Computer issues” resulted in a start delay of over 42 minutes for this wave. Some parts of the route was narrow, and felt like obstacle course with all those slow runners. I started to feel energy depletion starting from about two-thirds, so at that time I slowed down a bit. However, when I overtook the 02:40 pacers I knew I have hit my target net time of 02:00. I haven’t achieved this time in any of my training runs this year. So yeah.
Energy boost was in the form of Honey Stinger Energy Gel at 7 km and 14 km. This seem to work without triggering triggering gout like some of the other energy gels. Thanks Boey for recommending honey.
Update. Official net time is 01:49:34, ranked 401 out of 7031. The splits are given as:
9 km - 44:56
11 km - 01:05:01