One of the big achievements of the first half of 2007 for both Harriet and I was the successful completion of the Geneva half-marathon on 6 May 2007. I will write from my experience and Harriet will write from hers.

I went into this race confident that I could run 1:30:00 without too much of a problem, especially as the course was pretty much flat. We arrived in good time, the temperature was not hot, but not too cool either. The clouds helped as it kept the temperature at an acceptable level, a very good thing for me. We got our race gear and put our bags in the race container which had been organised for entrants. With 20mns left before the start of the race, I ran to the porta-pottie for the pre-race relief, stretching whilst in line. I then got a 5mns warm-up and about 8 strides in. then 5mns before the start of the race, some more stretching. Before I knew it, the gun shot, my heart rate was already pumping with nerves, and we were off.

It took me about 10 seconds to get past the start line, which isn’t too bad considering the amount of ppl. Many people shot by me, some of them I guess hoping it really wasn’t a 20km race. It was. I went through the first three km in 11:25 (avg of 3:48 per km). This worried me a bit, and my heart rate showed it, as I was quickly (from the first seconds of the race) up to 162, right below my marathon target heart rate. Somehow, I think the first few km were short. Assuming not, we then fell into groups, and continued on around the lake at a more manageable pace (4:10, 4:08, 4:09, 4:07, 4:07, 4:12 [water break], 4:05, 4:02 etc…)

It was exciting coming back after the first 5.5km because you got to see who was in front of you, by how much, and the masses of people behind you. We also got to see the first few pros fly by at the end of their second loop of the marathon. Wow. A few guys I had been running with took a little distance on me before the water stop, as did the number 2 woman in the race. I focused on my breathing, my form and my rhythm as I chugged through the center of the old town. Zig-zagging across bridges and around buildings was not my favorite part of the race by any means, and it was tough on the psyche.

Coming up on km 14 I took a second Goo and checked my time. My heart rate had moved up to 170 on a small incline leading to the 14km water point. At this point in the race (57mns) I ate as much of the Goo as possible and refocused on my breathing. It was not easy to ingest water/Goo while trying to keep that pace. The last 7km were harder, with my HR staying at 170-173 as I moved back towards the Jardin Anglais and finally, across the Pont du Mt Blanc again and up the Rive drive towards the OCM.

With 3km to go, I passed an old friend of mine (he is a machine!) who was doing the race as a training run, after having biked 50km into Geneva from his house. With 1.5km to go, and a v slight downhill, I passed the number 2 girl in the race, now well above my VO2 Max. I probably sounded like a buffalo running full thottle. At that point, I really didn’t care. The heels of my feet were both burning, apparently having managed to rub through the skin by 16km or so. lovely. I kicked it into the finish grateful the race was over and super excited that I had managed to keep such a good pace. I was overjoyed to find out I had run 1:26:32, 1.5mns faster than I had though I was capable of, and a full 3.5mns faster than I was expecting to run, having only started training for the race 10 weeks prior!

Final Time: 1:26:32
Place: 114 overall
Pace: 4:06/km
Heart Rate: 167 bpm

Below are some great pics my bro Dave took.