IJM Duo Highway Challenge – The Half Marathon

This is Part 2 of the IJM Duo Highway Challenge that took place on Sunday 29 July 2018.

My first #21kmrun in more than a decade. It was harder than I remembered. Crawled back home to rest my broken legs. Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for that second one in September… 🤔 . . . #fortyfitandfed #halfmarathon #duohighwaychallenge #runninglife #sundayrun

A post shared by Shen-Li Lee (@figur8) on Jul 28, 2018 at 9:36pm PDT

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The last time I ran a distance like this was back in 2006 – more than a decade ago – when I did the KL Marathon. Admittedly, it nearly destroyed me then, but hey, this was only 21km – half the distance. Surely, I could manage. I’d even been training for it. Well, sort of. I did a couple of long runs on a few Sundays and the occasional 5km in the gym when I could muster up the effort to run on my own. I would have trained harder but my running partner was out of commission and I hate working out alone.

Yeah, I know. I was a lazy git and I paid for it on race day. Running 21km was much harder than I remembered and my knees were screaming blue murder by the time I got to the finish line. I had to physically lift my legs with my hands to get into the car. Fatmanrunning was comtemplating a marathon next year and I was entertaining the idea with him. Yeah. No. I don’t think so. Once in my lifetime will have to do.

Fueling Up

Breakfast was an avacado and nutella sandwich with a banana and coffee. While that may or may not sound like a good idea, it’s my staple for an active morning. I also brought along two energy gels from Science in Sports which I took around the 10 km and 16 km mark. I could feel the boost from the one I took at the 10 km mark. Not sure I felt any benefit at all from the second gel. I guess my body was crashing by that point so no amount of revival was going to help.

Gearing Up

The last time I ran 21km, chaffing from clothing seams was a huge problem. Now that we have seamless, compression wear, I got away mostly unscathed. The only part I couldn’t avoid was my heart-rate monitor which starts chafing at the buckle after a while. That was easily taken care of with chamois cream.

The only problem I had was sports-bra chafing. I had completely forgotten how bad it can get since I haven’t run long distances in over a decade. While it didn’t get bad enough to bleed, it really hurts when I’m in the shower. I’m not a regular long distance runner, so I can afford to wait and heal before running again. That said, sports-bra chafing isn’t very pleasant, so let’s see what we can do about it…

In addition to an application of chamois cream, it is apparently all in the bra – getting the right fit and a bra that moves with you. According to Cheata, a bra with a low underband is also supposed to be better. Will that work? I’ll let you know after the next half marathon.

Race Stats

It took me 2 hours and 48 minutes. Yes, I was disappointed. I had hoped to finish with a better time. Perhaps that was rather arrogant of me to think I could maintain my old run times. I have another half marathon coming up later in the year. The goal will be to beat this time.