[part 2]
The turn at base of Death Valley (more prosaically Falmer Bottom) had a cheery marshal who had written up the leading times - first runner through 13km in an astonishing 52 mins - and then I pushed on for the rise to Kingston Ridge.
I passed Brian Courage and Jen Keaneally (both Almeria and core MM runners) on the full - with the wind giving helpful shove up.
My turn at top was still just 1 min down on target and likewise at top of Yellow Brick Road, 1:31 with just over 5km to go. I knew that a good final section could deliver sub-2hours.
Those last 5km were a touch harder than I expected, a slight rub of the new shoes on my right foot was irritating. On the turn up from Cricketing Bottom I succumbed to a walk up the little slope to the C7 to recover a little.
And then over, giving wave to fine marshalling crew - I pushed for the river bridge and the finish at the YHA. Looking at my times, I see I was clocking 5:30+, which was just about as fast as I could make it at that point. I was I think at my limit.
The finish of the first leg is just a tad over halfway, so the run was 21.3km and my published time was 1:58:59. My Garmin suggests I was at 1:58:05 for the half at 21.1km.
So I had hit my target of sub-2. This was around 25 minutes faster than my time a year before (albeit that was in post-blizzard conditions and under-trained/over-stressed).
The Asics training plan which I had followed pretty closely - had done its stuff well enough. Looking at other's published half times for that first leg, they look to be 10-15 mins below their best HM times, so I can count this one as equivalent to sub-1:50 I think!
I handed over to my partner Paula - who was doing the second leg again this year. And I smiled happily at what I felt was a good outing!
[part 3 follows]
A Moyleman For All Seasons
