I did the amsterdam marathon on sunday, and the weather was almost perfect (maybe a bit chilly at the beginning). My plan was to go sub 3, and before that race, my PRs for half marathon was 1:30:20 (last year), and for the full marathon was 3:11:22 (two years ago). Sub 3 didn't happen and these were my split times:
5 km 20:36 (20:36)
10 km 41:06 (20:30)
15 km 1:01:52 (20:46)
20 km 1:22:32 (20:40)
21,1 km 1:27:05
25 km 1:43:52 (21:20)
30 km 2:07:00 (23:08)
35 km 2:32:49 (25:49)
40 km 2:58:28 (25:39)
Net time 3:09:55
Gros time 3:10:08
Speed 13,331 Km/Hour
So I broke my half marathon PR by almost 3 and half minutes, and my marathon times by one and a half minutes. I forgot to bring my watch to the race, and there were no pace makers for 3 hrs, so I ended up following some guys who told me they were targeting 2:59. I was feeling so good, I have to try hard not to go faster, but at some point around 12K, I felt the guys I was following were too slow and left them. Around the half point, I started feeling some pain on my left knee and slowed a bit, and it went very bad after the 25K point, and so annoyed at myself when I saw the "slow" guys passing me at around 30K.
So my question is:
- If I have done a 1:30 or 1:31 first half, do you think I could have made it?
- Apart from the knee pain, I was quite OK, so can that be due to the temperature? It was a bit chilly at the beginning and I didn't have time to warm up properly before start (only 5 to 10 minutes)
- Is it better to race without a watch? I actually felt much better running without a watch as I was simply following my body (while with a watch I would have been checking it every 500 meters), but of course the side effect was I ended up running a first half that was too fast.
- Considering I did a 1:27 half during a marathon, shall I target something like 1:25 for my next half marathon (spring 2011)?