Annual pilgrimage for this end of season 1/2 Marathon in Fort William. Only my third road race of the year and first 1/2 since last years race. Good running weather, cool, not windy and mostly dry.
No great expectations of a good time after the PW at the M10 handicap. Having lost my stopwatch ran using a Heart Rate Monitor and decided to try for 85% of theoretical max which is 153 bpm and should be a nice steady pace which I could hopefully maintain, set the max to 160.
Kept the first mile under 150 and then eased the pace up, next time I looked sitting on 153, HR went up to 156 and down to 151 with the slight hills on the course and gradually picked off a few runners in front to about half way. Each mile covered in just under 8 minutes picking up about a minute over the first 6 miles.
Using the HR helped to avoid the urge to go faster, had to work a bit harder from 8 to 12 miles but managed to keep the even pace going until the last 1/2 mile and then a slight increase, HR up to 162 BPM and kept ahead of runners closing behind. Finished in 1:44:28, 33 seconds under 8 min mile pace.
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