Staying in a hotel only 20 minutes’ walk from the starting area I relaxed with setting the alarm for 0630. With a snooze and slow shuffle around in the hotel room before leaving at 0715 I realized when coming outside that it was still dark (I had an internal room so I had no view of the outside). Arriving at the starting area, still dark, I shuffled around for a bit more waiting for the start at 0840 (with the elites leaving at 0825). Had I known that there wasn’t any water stations in the area I would definitely have waited a bit before leaving the hotel room. No water at the start (unless you brought it yourself) was a huge surprise to me. That was a first.
It turned out they had only installed speakers near the starting line so if you were anywhere else – and the area was huge – you didn’t have a chance to hear the music or the announcers. Coming up to the starting line it turned out I wasn’t missing much; it was all in Spanish and the announcers sounded like DJs on coke.
Due to long lines at the porta potties I only made it to my starting group a few minutes before we were brought forward to the starting line. The group I was in contained the 1:30-1:45-runners and I only saw one pacer: the 1:45’er. While I would have preferred a more diverse pace team it was ok, but who’s idea was it to put him in the front of the group instead of somewhere in the middle?!
And, on time, off we went! At 21°-23°C along the way the temps were ok though maybe on the high side. The main issue was the high levels of humidity which made me struggle throughout most of the run. I didn’t seem to be the only one – only a few kilometers into the run I saw runners all over completely drenched in sweat.
The streets used for the course were quite narrow relative to the number of runners and how many they sent off at a time. That meant that it wasn’t until around the half-way point it felt like you could settle into your own pace instead of having to constantly adjust your pace and position due to the others. It was so frustrating. On top of this while running there were only water stations at 5, 10, 15 and 19km. For a warm and humid run like this it felt a bit underwhelming and certainly something you had to plan accordingly for. Personally I would honestly have preferred maybe 1-2 stations more along the way.
The support was good – a lot of people had shown up and stood along the course but there were few signs and the noise level was not near what I had gotten used to from my previous runs. On the other hand that just meant it was easier to concentrate on not crashing into the other runners.
The run was going quite well, the course is flat and turns are relatively easy, but with 5-6km to go my legs started feeling very heavy. I ended up getting in at 1:48:08, slower than my goal of 1:45. I came in as 7128 out of 16915 in total (top 42,14%) and 1324 out of 2383 M40 (top 55,56%). I couldn’t find the number for the position among men. Not the result I had hoped for, but I keep reminding myself that because this was the 4th run in 6 weeks (3 halfs and on full marathon) and the fact I don’t do well in high humidity these were far from optimal record-setting conditions. On the other hand I stayed below 1:48:26 which was the limit if I wanted my SuperHalfs average to be below 1:45. So a win overall.
Crossing the finish line and getting a medal, snacks and drinks in (another) bag, I located the SuperHalfs desk (very inconspicuous – somebody just sitting at a table in the middle of the crowd of finished runners) where I got handed my medal for running all 5 half marathons within 36 months. As the runs didn’t count towards the medal until the start of the year it meant that this was the first time one could collect this medal.
