Sunday, April 17, 2011

My first half-marathon

It’s done. I ran my first half marathon. What a fun!. This is not a long sprint where you go near the boundaries of your body, as at 5 km, this is not a race that requires the extreme endurance as a marathon. It's just between the two: a respectable distance, which requires some strategy to preserve one’s reserves of glycogen and concentration, to have a little "juice" to make a final sprint (which is not as fast as 5 or 10 K) and cross the finish line.
I just did it. I followed my game plan almost perfectly. My goal was to run 21.1 km in 1:59: 00 and the whole time I kept the same pace at 20 seconds better than my goal, without exceeding the zone of 80-85% of my maximum heart rate. Then I realized that I still had enough energy to sprint, and that's what I did and improved my time for another 30 seconds. In short, a time of 1:58:10. Mission accomplished.
I must admit that I came out of this race dirty as a little pig because the mud was everywhere after the rain that fell all night and the wind was bad enough. A good shower and everything is gone!

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