Very very happy with this. New PB :) :) Negative split :) :) 5 mins better than last year (cooler admittedly).

Before I was thinking up lots of reasons to not run within 90 minutes. My recent tempo runs weren't quite predicting this speed. But on the train in, I thought, how the hell am I ever going to run a marathon in 3 hours, if I can't run a half in 90 minutes!

I did the warm up with Pierre, and felt the hamstring a little - maybe a lot of running this week. 

I went off slowly, I had wanted to get ahead a little, but i was running 4:15 kms. When I ran a little faster, my pulse went to 158 - a little too high (my max heart rate is 171), so I slowed down. At about 5km, I had around 40 seconds in the bank (buffer), but I really wanted to be able to hold 90 minutes.

Halfway through I was worried that I can't keep the tempo, and the red balloons - 90 minute pace-setters - would catch me.

About 12 km, I realized that I was keeping the gap and if anything it was growing slightly and that a new pb was possible if I could keep it going. Let's go Martin!!!! So running form was kept, 1,2,3,4 - regular strides, stride length was optimized and I eked out 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there every minute. In the last few kms, it was very very hard, at 20kms I saw I need to run the last 1.1km in 4m50 to beat my pb. I sprinted at the end, ow ow ow.....

It hurt, but ultimately this was very very pleasing - a negative split, speed at the end, and a new personal best. I have put in a lot of training over the summer, and days like this make it worthwhile :) :)