My main "A" race is the Macau Marathon on December 2nd, and as such, I was hoping to find a nice road 10K to use to predict my marathon finishing time, and thus my pace. After a bit of thought on the subject, I chose the Gold Coast 15K, which I though might be more accurate since it is longer, obviously.
This race is relatively flat, since it mainly goes along the side of a mountain on a catchwater. However, as with most catchwaters in HK, there are actually quite a few turns, slight undulations, and unevenness to the surface, which make it a bit slower than a purely flat surface.
My friend Kevin told me that I could get caught in traffic going up the first hill, and thus to avoid this, I showed up early, and after a brief warm up, and got a fairly good starting spot, only 5-6 rows back. My pre-race plan was to go up the first hill easy (about the same as I would in training) then slip into a comfortable pace on the flats, hopefully hitting between 4:10-4:20k pace. Kevin told me that due to the crowds, it might be best to simply use the final 10K as a prediction tool.
Race day felt a bit "chilly" by HK standards (ie. 22 C/ 72F, with 72% humidity), ie. not cold in the North American sense whatsoever, but relatively cold. The wind was also blowing around 10-20MPH.
As the race started, it looked like my strategy would pay off. I went up the first hill hard, but not too fast, doing a 6:01 first K after gaining 270ft, and I was able to get into a comfortable groove on the flats, hitting 4:19 pace, which I thought was on the conservative side.
However, I quickly found that running sub-4:20 was getting hard. My legs would not turn over fast enough, and soon my mind was filled with negativity I though about my tight hips, from Friday's
16.5K to Tung Chong via Pak Au Gou. I thought about
Tuesday's hard workout, with 5 relatively fast miles. I thought about my lack of VO2 sessions, and how that was slowing me down. I thought about how my targets for a 3:05 or 3:10, would have to be replaced with 3:20-3:30's.
I went through the first 5K in 23:15, and sooner after, the 4:20's dipped to the 4:30's in the last few K. I was able to go a bit faster towards the end (4:27), and in the final downhill (3:54), finishing in
1:08:02.
Overall, I was fairly disappointed.
However, later I mentioned how it went to Kevin, and he remarked that he ran this race in 1:09 and a few weeks later did a 3:12. Also, due to the first hill, the final result is more like a 1:06 on a normal course. If that is the case, then I'd be in for around a 3:17 marathon, according to Daniel's Running Formula. If you take the fact that I didn't taper and was a bit sore and tired and that it was windy, then I'd probably be even a bit faster.
In a nutshell, I gained that feedback that a 3:05 (4:22) -- ie. a BQ -- is unrealistic right now. I'll probably aim for a 3:15, and maybe even try to do a negative split, 1:40/1:35 marathon. To some extent this depends on how this last week of hard training goes before a two week taper. We'll see.
Update: 92nd out of 1245, 85th out of 1046 in gender, 28 and out of 318 in category.
