1:34:33

Okay it wasn't a PB but I'm happy. Here come the excuses....No not really, although I think it was definitely a harder course than Wellington with several challenging (especially on the second lap) rises. I won't call them hills because they weren't really but you sure as hell felt them. The good news is that the right foot held up remarkably well, so well in fact that I didn't even feel it. On the other hand my left foot started giving me grief from about the 8 km mark. At this stage I was cursing myself for running in the race thinking I had done myself another injury. As it turned out, it was just a nasty blister much to my relief.

A few of the guys with GPS watches reckon the course was slightly too long, about 300-400 metres or so, so take another two minutes off my time there - well that might be streching it. So now I know where I am at I can reassess my goal for the Melbourne half. I think a PB is not out of the question here. In fact I will disappointed with anything less.

Oh yeah, thought I would take the opportunity to show off my new toy, the Polar RS800SD. Here is a screenshot of my race today. My pace was fairly steady (blue line) until about 3km out where I started to struggle a bit. You can also see a steady progressive increase of my heart rate (red line) from about the half way point. Interesting you say, very interesting.