Half Marathon Santa Pola

My favourite event of my half-marathon calendar came around again last Sunday, and once again it didn't disappoint. Santa Pola has one of the biggest popular races in Spain, more than seven thousand people finished this year, and its one big party with what seems like the whole town on the street cheering. There are bands playing at various points on the course, when the course leaves the populated areas of the town they have speakers blasting out music, it really is one big party.

The race has a great atmosphere, is well organized and has a pancake flat course, when I raced in Benidorm there were lots of running tourists, personally I think they are missing a trick by not coming instead to Santa Pola. The one negative point is just a result of the race being so popular, despite the wide boulevard used for the start of the race it is very difficult to avoid getting held up in the first few kilometres, but with the exception of the 10k in Valencia I've had the same problem in any race with more than 2,000 participants.

I think its clear I like the event, but how was my race? I enjoyed it but I'm still not running as fast as I would like. I finished in 1557th place with a finish time of 1:35:51 and a chip time of 1:33:57. It was my quickest half marathon this season, but was more than five minutes slower than I managed in the same race last year. I didn't go into the race expecting to challenge my time of last year but I was hoping to be alot closer to breaking 90 minutes.

Looking at my splits though there is enough there to suggest I'm not too far away. Discounting my time to cross the start line my 5k splits were:

• 22:42
• 21:59
• 21:56
• 22:36

In the first 5k I was inevitable slowed down by the sheer number of runners, in a less popular race I'm sure there is a good bit of time I could make on the first split. The other thing to note is that in my training cycle my longest run has been my half marathon races, the lack of stamina told in the last few kilometres, I was really just hanging on for the finish. I'm pretty sure with a couple of longer runs over the next month I'll be able to get closer to my best.

So now we get to the bag review. As in the previous two years, Santa Pola did not disappoint. Check out the goodies:

A bag, good quality t-shirt, towel, discount vouchers for a safari park, drinks and snacks, and last but not least the traditional Santa Pola gift of a year's supply of Santa Pola salt, I say a year, I still haven't finished the bottle from two years ago. It is a top quality race with a top quality bag.

Well done Santa Pola! You are in pole position for goodie bag of the year.

Happy Running
El maratonero