Edmonton Half

Going into Edmonton Half I backed off a few days so I could get a good feel for my fitness. I had run 5 weeks over 200km so I was due to back-off a bit anyways.

I got to Edmonton on Friday and went down to the river for a little shake-out run. At that point I hadn’t seen a start list and wasn’t sure what the competition was going to be like. On my run I saw Daniel Kipkoech, (whom I’ve met before at races), and jogged with him. To my dismay I found out he came right from Kenya. The 700m of altitude at Edmonton would feel like sea-level to him, not so for me.

Photo: Deirdre Rowland

Right from the gun Daniel went out as if he was running a 10km. He went through the first km in 2:52, 12 seconds ahead of myself, Justin Young, Kip Kangogo and a few other guys. I thought Daniel was going to blow up, all I had to do was stay on my pace and bid my time. Although you should never count on an athlete to fall off pace, there was no way I was going to go out that fast anyways.

By 6km I was on my own, still about 12-15 seconds back of Daniel. For all my efforts I was not able to close the gap on him as I kept kicking off about 3:02/km. It was nice to have someone out there as a target to key off of.

Instead of closing in on Daniel in the last 5km he actually put more time into me. He won in 63:36 while I came in second in 64:09.

Photo: Trevor Hofbauer

Daniel Kipkoech 1 01:03:36.0
Reid Coolsaet 2 01:04:09.0
Kip Kangogo 3 01:05:02.0
Justin Young 4 01:05:05.0

Truth be told I would have really liked to be under 64:00. A 63:10-63:30 would have been good at sea-level so I was thinking 63:35-63:55 at Edmonton would have been about equivalent (that’s a rough guess). Basically I was 1 sec/km off so I’m not worried and happy enough with that effort. The course was flat and the weather was nice, so no excuses there.

My endurance felt fine and my leg speed lacking. That’s a good place to be 5 weeks out from Berlin. Enough time to work on ‘speed’ while maintaining endurance. I also think I’m going to race a 10km before Berlin to sharpen up.

Saskatchewan River.