At a weak moment David got me to sign up again for Reading. It was just the two of us this year since Marty was recovering from the surgery to remove his ‘tail’.
Preparation, as usual, was poor. It consisted of a few long Sunday runs with Blaze, Marty, Moults and Dave O’Sullivan. The trip back to New Zealand in February added stored energy and reduced mileage.
That aside, we lined up with 18,000 other runners on Sunday 20th March in good running conditions. Running a PB was never really on, but we set out at 1:40 pace anyway. The splits show the story of blowing out half way around and not being able to maintain the early pace:
1st 5km 24:05
2nd 5km 24:03
3rd 5km 26:54
4th 5km 27:43
Blaze dropped me on the first mile but he remained in sight for the first 5-6 miles until we hit the City centre. I caught up around the 8 mile mark after the long hill climb, but my ambitions of hiding behind him and taking him in the last 50 metres quickly evaporated when he disappeared around the 10 mile mark.
By the time I got to the long straight towards the stadium (2 miles to go) I was really battling and my running had descended to shuffling. I didn’t think I was doing that bad until some guy asked me at the end of the straight if I was all right!!
The last 1.1km took 6:55 🙁 giving me a total time of 1:49:40. I got passed by someone wearing only a lime green mankini and running shoes. Blaze made it home in 1:46:08.
While the links are still up, you can see video action of Blaze and myself crossing the finish line.
