Santa Pola Half Marathon - Breakthrough Race

Last Sunday saw the start of my racing year, and it was a great start as I achieved my failed 2009 target of a 1:30 half marathon at the first time of asking. From the start line to the finish line my time was 1:28:50, Santa Pola is a popular race with close to 7,000 runners so infinitely there is some delay in getting to the start line, my time from the gun to the finish line was 1:30:04.

Santa Pola is a quick course, most of it is running alongside the beach, so inevitably its completely flat, but at the same time I was slowed up over the first few kilometres by the sheer number of runners. It will be interesting to see what happens in my next race in Orihuela with fewer people but more ups and downs. But one of the great things about Santa Pola was that it was good preparation for London in terms of being faced with lines of people in front that you have to patiently find a way through. London will be 30,000 runners rather than 7,000 but the streets will be alot wider so all in all its fairly similar. In truth its really frustrating being held up, but you have to be patient, you waste important energy that you will need at the end of the race if you keep fighting to get through all the time.

The delay is borne out by my 5km splits:

5km  23:23 23:23
10km 20:45 44:08
15km 20:52 1:05:00
20km 21:05 1:26:05
21.1km 3:59 1:30:04

The first 5km time includes the time to cross the start line, so taking that out its 22:09, so still a minute slower than any of the subsequent 5km splits.

All in all it was a great day, a PB on a nice course running by the sea with plenty of cheering on of runners by what seemed like the whole town with live music at various points on the course, great place, great course, great people and great result. I'm already looking forward to going back next year!

Here are a couple of pictures from the day, the University half-marathon team, I'm hiding at the back, and me at about 15 kilometres.