Cross training, good weather and other factors contributing to a good race...

The Wanderers 21.1km took place on Sunday 28 August.  There was an option to run a 10km and when I arrived at the Wanderers stadium at 06:30 on Sunday morning, the cold wind and miserable looking sky almost convinced me to take the easy way out.  But I had been focused on running this half marathon the whole week so I wasn't keen to give up on myself just yet.  I accepted that it wouldn't be a great race, seeing that I have only done one race of 10km in the past few months and my training doesn't exactly consist of heavy mileage at this stage.  But I knew I've been doing just enough to at least make it through a 21.1km, even if that meant walking along the way to catch my unfit breathe.  So I lined up with a very small field on Sunday morning, hoping to at least come in under the six minutes a km time of 2:06.  I shivered my way through the first few km, which passed by very slowly.  About 4 or 5 km into the race, I started to warm up enough to take off the extra layer that was shielding me from the wind.  The weather remained cool for the duration of the race (and day) but while this seemed like a bad thing earlier that morning, it was turning out to be a great thing for the runners! Kays 5 to 16 flew by and before I knew it, the race was coming to an end! I'm not sure what it was, maybe a combination of things like fresh legs at the beginning of running season, my extra hours in the gym this Winter or the cool weather (or maybe the fact that I needed the bathroom for the better part of the race so I was extremely focused on getting to the end as quickly as possible), but somehow, the race went surprisingly well! In April of this year, after having run two full marathons, I ran the Two Oceans half marathon in Cape Town.  I like to think I was pretty fit at this stage and I managed to run a PB of 1:47. Somehow, on Sunday I ran the Wanderers half marathon in 1:48.  I wouldn't say I'm even nearly as fit now as I was then, so how this happened, I'm not entirely sure.  Runners always say that how you feel on the day of a race, can change everything, despite all the hard work you may have already done in preparation for the race.  So maybe it was just my lucky day.