Torrevieja Half Marathon

Last Sunday I ran another half marathon, and yet again its a story of disappointment as a result of disrupted preparations, but again I'm the one to blame. The Monday following the race in Orihuela I played football, about half an hour into the game I turned fairly sharply and felt a pain in my lower back. I continued to play despite suffering a fair bit of discomfort. I went home, rested the next day, before going out to run on the Wednesday. I was suffering a bit at the start of the run but the longer I went the easier things got so for the rest of the week I trained as normal.

I went out for a long run on the Sunday, I was still feeling the pain so it was a slow one, but I managed to do my longest run since I ran in London last year, 24km. My back wasn't right but it wasn't affecting me too much and seemed to be getting better, but I pushed things a little too much. On the Monday again I played football, and surprise surprise, I aggravated the injury. Again I could still run, but the pain was that bit more intense. With a half marathon planned for the weekend I booked myself in for a session of physio.

My physio confirmed that it wasn't something that should stop me from running, but that I should avoid brusque movements. She did her thing to try to speed up the recovery, but when the race came round on the Sunday I was still in some discomfort and needless to say I wasn't able to give of my best.

Anyway, I got round ok, and I was doubtful about that over the first few kilometres, and once again my back felt better the longer I ran so my splits got successively faster through the race. I ended up finishing in 1:39:47 with a chip time of 1:38:58. However, in this case my time shouldn't really be compared to what I've done.

One big mistake by the personal responsible for laying out the cones at one end of the lap meant that the race was a half marathon only in name, all 1596 finishers ran 652m more than necessary. It was fairly obvious to me while running something wasn't. I had my GPS watch and it was pretty much bang on in agreement with the kilometre markers, until the 9th kilometre, at that point I was doing about 4:45 min/km, but between the 8th and 9th kilometre markers I must have taken more than 6 minutes, the same thing happened on the second lap so I was pretty sure it wasn't just badly positioned kilometre markers. The organizers confirmed the error two days after the race.

That apart the race was really well organized, but unfortunately it is a pretty big mistake to make. Lots of people will have lost out on the possibility of setting personal bests, and to find out after running almost 22 kilometres that a PB was taken away by one mistake would be a pretty big slap in the face. Fortunately for me, I was never close to a PB.

I set off fairly gingerly, the back was pretty uncomfortable at the start, I was doubtful that I would be able to last the race but thankfully the more I ran the more the injury seemed to settle down and the faster I was able to run. By the end of the race I was getting close to the pace I averaged in the same event last year, 4:08 min/km. Here are the splits:

1st 5K:  24:48 4:58min/km
2nd 5.326K:  24:38 4:38min/km
3rd 5K:  22:05 4:25min/km
4th 5.326K:  23:02 4:19min/km
5th 1.097K:  4:25 4:02min/km

Overall I left the race fairly happy, I'm still disappointed that I'm so far from the pace I was able to run last year but given the preparations I've had, I've not really had the chance to push things too much. I've still got six weeks until the marathon in Madrid and two weeks before that I'll do a half marathon in Elche. Hopefully by then I'll be easing down from a few high mileage weeks and be in good condition to push on to at least sub 1:30.

As a said, apart from the problem with the distance, the event was a good one. The weather wasn't great but there was still enough people out of the street to create a good atmosphere. It wasn't as lively as Santa Pola or Orihuela but enjoyable nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend a tourist to make a special trip for it, but if you are in town and fancy a run its a good event.

So now we come to the goodie bag review, and its the same story as the race overall, nothing amazing but its everything you expect and just a little bit extra to put a smile on your face. Here's the pic:

We have, a bag, a t-shirt, a cap, a little trophy and a neck-warmer or snood as I think they are known as in the UK. It's a nice bag, I'll make use of the t-shirt and probably the bag, the neck-warmer isn't really suited to the Alicante weather but one day it might come in useful. The trophy is a nice touch. What it lacks is the food, you burn up alot of energy and its nice to finish with a bag full of food, to know you can replace all that you used up, not having anything in there was a let down. The end result is that Torrevieja does ok, but doesn't get close to Santa Pola standard.

Next to see what Elche has to offer.