Reading Half 2017 - Found it tough after 10k? You're not the only one!
Reading Half 2017 - Found it tough after 10k? You're not the only one!
So the Reading Half Marathon 2017 was run last weekend and it seems there were quite a lot of people that struggled after 10k. Now this is a half marathon so thats kind of expected, running that far is hard, but things seemed disproportionate. A quick scan down of the results and splits gives us some idea of if this was in fact the case.
Normally the elite athletes run pretty even splits the entire course but this year there was a noticeable drop in pace across the 3rd split (10-15k).
The above image shows the split pace for the top 100 finishers for each for the 5k, 10k, 15k and 20k splits. 100% relates to each individual’s average pace across the entire course so greater than 100% is a faster split than they averaged and less than 100% is slower. So the fastest runners were all slower during the 3rd split that their average, that seems to tell a story by itself.
Across the entire data set, or at least the ones that registered a time on each split, 1096 runners completed the 3rd split at a faster pace than their average, that’s out a total of 9602 or just 11 over 11%.
For the slower runners, you would expect an increasing number to slow down as the race progresses as they are generally not as used to running long distances so it is not unusual to see slower split times later on.
But is this normal or does it show us something? As a comparison, in 2016 the top 100 runners chart shows a noticable difference.
Again, they mostly follow the same trend, but a different one to this year with a pretty constant pace throughout the middle 2 splits. Overall this year there were almost 38% of runners that managed to run that split faster than average, 4104 out of 10841.
So what is the reason for the decline in 2017?
My guess was the weather, or more specifically the wind! We all knew it was a breezy day and it obviously it left its mark. Checking the weather shows a 19mph WSW wind and if we check the map below to find out exactly where the 10-15k (in blue) section is you can see that the majority of the split was straight into a headwind.
Add this to the incline up Russel St. and you can see why so many found it so hard.
After a tough 5k stretch, many runners were able to pick the pace back up and finish strongly but there were a lot that looked to have had been finished off by the then.
So if you found it hard going through the town and up to Prospect park, don’t worry – almost everyone else did too!
