Auckland Marathon 2007

I completed my second Auckland Marathon the other weekend. My time was 4:08:20, which surprisingly is about 12 minutes faster than last years.

I still haven't done much running, but Kel and I do a fair amount of other stuff, including boxing two or three times a week.

In any case, this race went quite a lot better than my last few. I think the key was eating quite a lot in the early morning before the race, then not eating much at all while running. In some races (including my first and still fastest) I feel the low blood sugar, and pig out on energy gel and whatever sport drink is on hand. In almost all my previous races this seems like it's led to my stomach waking up and going into digestion mode, taking blood from my legs, which then cramp up. As you can see from the splits below, this last race's split times were much more consistent than my Rotorua marathon splits. In fact, I held my finish together much stronger than even my fastest marathon. In that race I dropped to 10 minute miles in the last quarter, and only managed the time I did (3:48) by virtue of the massive buffer I'd built up in the first half of the race. In the Auckland this year, I went light on the drinks and water in the last half, and only took one big food break, at about 30k. Definitely going to use that strategy again . . . oh, and do some running before the next one. We'll see how Craig does in the Marine Corp marathon, hopefully that'll move the goalposts a little farther from the couch. ;-)

Auckland Marathon 2007
KM  Split 
1   6:02 
2   5:43
3   5:55
4   5:57
5   5:51
6   5:51
7   5:23
8   5:41
9   6:17
10  5:37
11  5:17
12  7:24
13  5:40(est) 28:21
14  5:40(est) 28:21
15  5:40(est) 28:21
16  5:40(est) 28:21
17  5:40(est) 28:21
18  5:16(est) 10:32
19  5:16(est) 10:32
20  6:14
21  5:32
22  5:43
23  5:57
24  5:55
25  5:36
26  5:34
27  6:04
28  5:36(est) 11:12
29  5:36(est) 11:12
30  5:53
31  5:53
32  6:06
33  6:17
34  6:46
35  6:20
36  5:54
37  6:18
38  5:46
39  6:06
40  5:57
41  6:31(est) 13:02
42  6:31(est) 13:02
Fin: 4:08:20