BHP Run (10.7km)

Place : The Curve
Time : 0730am
Weather : A bit on the sunny side, about 30 deg C
Course : Some gradient, but not excessive

The run came with good support from BHP's suppliers' and the Pacesetters' did a good job in managing the race.

Thumbs up as far as the running of the event. A lot of participants turned up, about 1,500 based on my best "guesstimate".

The whole family went for this run as I was expecting a lot of free food and drinks, which the kids would enjoy, and we could do little bit of shopping after that.

The men's open and veteran (ha! ha! I qualified as a veteran) started off first at 7.31am and the ladies 5 minutes later.

My pace was pretty good as I was focusing on hard but sustainable for as long as possible. I was not too concerned about negative splits, as it didn't seem to work for me for any distance below 20km. I had 12km/h as my target race pace for the race.

The going was smooth up to the 5th km, and I started to feel some fatigue creeping in. I had about a minute in the pocket to meet the target pace, so I backed off, as my HRT was getting up to 184 bpm, and there were hills coming up. For the next 5km, the pace was below 12kmh, with the worst at 11.3km/h thereabouts.

Coming to the last km (or so I thot!), I turned on the remaining juice to kick up the speed and it was quite nice to race somebody in front of me up to the finish!

I almost crashed into him at the end because there was quite a crowd right after the finish line.

I was elated to do a PR on the 5k and 10k mark for this race! I managed to shave off about 20 seconds off my best 5k and 1 min 57 sec sec of my best 10k, albeit 3 seconds off the target pace.

I finished 53:21 for a 12km/h pace finish.

Right On! The additional miles and LSD seemed to really pay off!

It was a great race and hope that there'll be another next year.

I'll be doing a 30k LSD next week and then a trip up north to Bidor for the last weekend of April.