Techcombank HCMC International HALF-Marathon

#nextchaptervietnam

Participant...Finisher...possibly even a 2nd place WINNER?!?!

All the hard work during the Wednesday night runs with the club and the early morning solo runs on weekends paid off today.

One of the parks I run through on a weekly basis

I woke up at 2am for a race that was meant to begin at 4:30am in the center of HCMC. We started a little late, but I wasn't going to let that affect me. I was feeling quite good.

Before picture

I decided to stick with one of my colleagues from the start as I knew he could hold up a good pace and I felt I could likely stay with him for a good portion of the race.

Nearly half way into the race, I noticed there were only 2 girls in front of me. I got a tad excited and decided to pick up a bit more speed. Right away, I passed one girl, which meant that I was in 2nd. I knew my chances of catching the 1st girl were very slim, so I decided that I just needed to pace myself and hold on to the 2nd spot.

In the last 5km, I thought I could potentially finish under 1h45mins (my ultimate half-marathon goal). I was still feeling quite good, so again, I decided to speed up. Unfortunately, I finished in 1:46:29, which is still an amazing time and actually a new PB for me.

When I got to the finish line, I thought I had finished 2nd for the ladies, however I was pretty confused when I saw other women already there. After speaking with a few other runners, I thought maybe there was a large group of people way ahead in the race that I never even saw. I left very unsure about where I finished amongst all the half-marathoners.

After picture

To my surprise, this evening, once the results were posted, I noticed I did indeed finish 2nd! I was...am...soooooo happy! "It's a shame I didn't get to stand on the podium"..."I wonder if I missed out on any prizes"... "OH WELL!"

RESULTS

When I signed up for this race about a month ago, I was hoping to just finish under 2 hours; Boy oh boy did I out-do myself!

My next big event is the FULL 42km marathon in January; that's actually just 8 weeks away! YIKES! Let the training continue!

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