Weston Creek Half on a Perfect Day!

After the Half Marathon, Team Half and Half and Strewth

What an exciting weekend! Yesterday I took as my rest day apart from a short 3km run with Teddy in the afternoon to give him a fast run on the grassy oval with a playmate he found. Late last night my daughter telephoned with the exciting news that she and her lovely man are engaged. They live in Sydney and he had come to Canberra for business during the week and arranged to have a drink with Mr B and me to ask our permission to marry our daughter. We are absolutely delighted and apparently it was a very romantic and magical proposal.

The beautiful engagement ring!

I didn't sleep a lot last night. Whether it was excitement at the news or anticipation for today's race I don't know but the alarm seemed to go off very soon after I finally fell asleep! I had a couple of pieces of white toast and honey and a cup of tea two hours before the run start. There was only time for a 1km warm up before the run by the time I collected my number and chatted to lots of people. However a little warm up is better than no warm up at all in theory.

The first few kms of the run felt hard and my hamstring was really tight and sore for about 10km. After the turnaround I felt much stronger - very strange but suddenly I felt much better and didn't really notice that I didn't have music because there was so much going on around me. There was a boat regatta happening on the water and lots of cyclists including a cycling event. I'm glad I had run the course before because there were a couple of places where I may have become confused as the cycle event red arrows pointed a different way! With no sense of direction I was happy to see runners up ahead and know I was running in the right direction. Just near Scrivener Dam I spotted Cookie up ahead and put on my accelerator to chase her down. I managed to catch and pass her which really pleased me as she is running really well. This was her first half marathon and she ran it in 2:03 which is awesome for a first one. 

I ran my 19th km in 5:30 pace which was my fastest km. It must have had some downhill. There were a few nasty hills out there including the long one past Scrivener Dam and a few more undulations after that which I'm sure slowed me down. The conditions were perfect for running, cool to start but warming up to a lovely morning after a heavy downfall during the night.

Total distance: 21km (plus 1km warm up)

Time taken: 2:01:30

Average pace per km: 5:46

Place in age group: 1st (woo hoo - a Runners' Shop voucher)

Calories burned: 1165
Total distance for week: 89km

We scored well today with CJ and Mr B winning 3rd place in the teams event and scoring a big box of choccies each. Mr B also won a barrel draw of a bottle of wine and CJ a bag of M&Ms. Yay for chocolate and wine!