April => PR month! 1:26:17 on half marathon!

After breaking my personal records on the 5 and 10 km last week, I decided to go for an attempt on the half marathon today.

While my goal was to beat 90 min (1:30:00), my old pr was still stuck on 1:32:29. I didn’t do a taper or carb loading or treat today like something special I just wanted to give it a try on a random day - meaning that if I can do it today I don’t need perfect conditions to pull it off!

Warm up:

My warmup today was 20 km easy cycling (appointment at the office) and 2 km easy jogging before starting my run. These 2 km jog allowed me to start in an area where I would not be bothered too much by traffic, infact there were only 6 crossroads during the entire run so chances were I could just run without having to slow down for traffic.

Strategy:
I created a plan in garmin that incorporated negative splits and would pace me to 1:27:59 - but I trew that out of the window as 4:05/km felt steady. I decided to take a little more risk and tried to hold that constant pace rather than using negative splits (=start easy and gradually increase pace). The first 18 km I was able to hold that pace before it got tough

From 18 km onwards I focussed on reducing the slowing down as much as possible. At 20 km I found a little more energy left to get back on track and finish strong.
Overall 6 minutes faster than my old PR.

2026 goals:

Sub 20 5k = ✅ 19:29
Sub 40 10k = ✅ 39:09
Sub 90 HM = ✅ 1:26:17
Sub 180 FM

Happy running!