Korokoro Stream Half Marathon

This is, without a doubt, the hardest half marathon I have ever run. The course descends to sea level, and then proceeds to climb all the way to Belmont Trig at 456m asl. On top of that, this was the longest run that I had done since before my hernia operation.

The day was overcast, 10-14°C with intermittent drizzle. However, there was almost no wind, so the conditions were great for running. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to run the whole thing, or whether I might have to walk a significant amount of the higher part of the course. Given the weather, I packed enough gear into my pack to allow for a walk in potentially quite heavy rain and wind.

Despite these handicaps, I was in the first ten for about the first kilometer. I found myself running with the lead woman runner, although she was a little faster than me on the downhills, and I would catch her up again on the uphills. This lasted until the long descent to State Highway 2 (about 2-3m asl), where she comfortably pulled away from me. For the last week I had been having problems with the posterior tibialis muscle in each leg, and I found that I just couldn’t stretch my legs out sufficiently on the downhills. Nevertheless, I went through the first 5km in 25:01 – a bit slow, but good enough given the recent lack of training.

The short section along SH2 was uneventful, and soon we were heading up the Korokoro Stream track. I was still in the top third of the field until I had to stop to repair a blister. In the course of about 60s, almost all of the rest of the field passed me by, and there was only about 5 people left behind me.

The route up Korokoro Stream was very pleasant – even the upper sections where we had to cross through the stream. After leaving the stream at Baked Beans Bend, we started the relentless upwards climb. I soon relented, and started walking rather than running. It was then a long walk all the way to the top. I made it to the top in 1:37:31 – longer than the slowest half marathon that I had run earlier in the year!

From the top there was nowhere to go but down, and I found that my posterior tibialis muscles had stretched sufficiently to enable me to make a reasonable go of the downhill (apart from exercising extra caution not to aggravate the hernia site). It wasn’t long until Stratton Street was reached, and from there to the finish it was a combination of run and walk on the undulating roads and footpaths. I eventually made it to the finish in 2:20:56, having passed quite a few people since the trig.