2016 St Albans Half

Ran this today, family came and did fun run. Bottom line is I did well and am happy about that. Official (i.e. as listed online) time is 1:36:56, a 7:24 pace, my 9th best half time ever (out of 12). However this official time is certainly about 20 seconds too long (more on that below) and in reality this was my 8th-fastest half. Regardless it's a good time for this challenging, hilly race on a very rainy day. My most recent half (Hillingdon 2016), a much flatter course, was 1:38:32. So I can't complain.

I know the online time is too slow because it lists both my overall time and my net (i.e. chip-timed) time as 1:36:56. This could only be true if I started right at the start line, which I didn't. It's as if my chip wasn't working so they just went with my overall time. According to Garmin I ran 13.16 miles in 1:36:40 (a 7:21 pace). I remember taking a few seconds after finishing to remember to stop my Garmin. This suggests my actual finish time was probably about 1:36:36, and that I took about 20 seconds to cross the start line, which sounds about right.

What went wrong with the timing? I'm not sure but they also screwed up my registration so maybe that has something to do with it. When I registered I signed Jade and kids up for the fun run and myself for the half. But when I picked up my number pack it was inexplicably in Jade's name. This meant they had to discard my pack and issue me a new number and chip manually, on the spot. Maybe something was off with the chip they gave me. I have no idea.

In any event at worst my official time was off by 2-3 seconds per mile. I can live with that, especially since my official time was better than I expected. I'd felt so sluggish leading up to this race that I expected it to be my slowest half ever. I was thinking this even up through the first half of the race. But mile after mile I just kept shaving seconds off my pace and I had so much energy towards the end. My two fastest miles were 11 (6:40) and 12 (6:47), which says a lot. During the last two miles I was passing so many people going up the hills -- sometimes steep hills really bring out my best.

Update 27/06/16: The race site now shows my actual net time, 1:36:29! Something possessed me to check it again today, 15 days post-race, and I was surprised to see the correction. This is 27 seconds faster than the original mistaken time, and a 7:22 pace instead of 7:24. It's also only 3 seconds slower than my 2014 time in the same race. And I was right when I said above that in reality this was my 8th-fastest half (out of 12).