Striders internal half marathon - 86.06

Had a rest day on Saturday with a good sleep on Friday night, just as well, as the Neighbours had a party on Saturday night and I had a restless sleep. Silverfox gave me a lift over to Lane Cove and we had our usual running, family, etc discussions. Was feeling pretty good this morning and did a 3k warm-up jog before my starting time.
Today was a handicap half marathon, basically 2 laps of striders 10k course plus 1.1k extra on the other side of the river - I was in the 87 minute group with 3 others including Ron S and Sue K, but the group started off slowly and I was already about 50m ahead at 1k, by 4k I had caught the group ahead and one of them came with me which was good as he was keeping a solid pace. He ran with me until 12k when he dropped off. Second time up Scribbly, I passed quite a few runners and although I was slowing, it felt good to keep passing people. The hill up to Ryde road is a killer even when you only have to do it once in a 10k race, but today we did it twice and although I passed quite a few more people, I started to feel a bit weary. Took a few waters at the turn-a-round but I really wanted a sports drink. Basically hammered it out back down the hill as fast as I could, then at 19k I could here someone behind me, it was Ron. He overtook me and pulled ahead by about 15 metres and I thought, bugger that, no-one from my group is going to beat me today so we had a bit of a tussle down to the weir, turned the corner with Ron still ahead but I sprinted and just beat him over the line in 86.06.

Very happy with the time on such a tough course - especially as it was basically a time trial, 55 secs under my handicap , 13th overall, 15th by time.

Can't wait to run a half on the flat, think I could go 83-84 minutes.

Nice to catch up with a few people at the end too.

Total 94k for the week.