And they?re off.......Half marathon season has officially started with the running of the Peterborough Half Marathon and Tim Horton?s Grimsby Half Marathon. Both events also hosted shorter distances; 5k in Peterborough and 3k in Grimsby. In the Peterborough 5k, runners were Matt Berneche (19:32), Alex Lounsberry (37:46), Rory Harrison (28:20), Monique Ibey (43:20), Troy Winder (37:58), Marissa Kyte (37:46), Patricia Kyte (34:34), Kristi Reid (31:32), Brian Donnan (24:23), Pam Donnan (29:25), and Andrea Vanden Tillaart (28:11). Robert Johnston ran the Grimsby 3k in 17:04.
The Peterborough half was well represented by the Quinte area with the fastest time being 1:22:36 by Jutta Merilainen followed by Greg Conlin (2:02:59), Chris Berneche (1:38:42), Boyd Kalnay (1:24:40), Danny Rose (2:09:17), Kim Walsh (1:45:32), April Archer (2:07:13), Neil Ibey (1:45:04), Mackenzie MacDonald (2:29:25), Barbara Sauve (2:29:25), Richard Bonathan (1:51:28), Matt Gemmell (1:53:29), Tara Rawluk (1:50:25), Wayne Snowden (1:44:05), Julie Soule (2:08:53), Regina Alexander (2:43:05), Rebecca Haslip (2:15:51), Greg Nicholson (1:58:54), Tara Prance (2:00:38), Michelle Kitchener (1:56:33), Paul Dryburgh (1:49:53), John Daley (1:34:12), and Tim Johnson (1:25:58).
If you are wondering who might run a half marathon the demographics from 2007 show that over 650,000 people ran the 21k distance at 630 races, with an almost 50/50 mix of men and women. The largest age group for both men and women is 30-39 while 46% of male race participants and 36% of female race participants come from the masters age group (40 plus). The largest half marathon in North America is the OneAmerica 500 Festival Half Marathon held in Indianapolis with 30,050 finishers and the largest Women?s only half is the More Half Marathon in New York City with 6,168 finishers. The average finishing time for men in 2007 was 2:13 and for women was 2:27. The men?s world record is 58:33 set by Sammy Wanjiiru in March 2007; Lornah Kiplagat set the women?s world record in Oct 2007 with a 1:06:25 finish. The demographics from Peterborough were: 12 men with an average finishing time of approximately 1:46 and 11 women with an average finishing time of approximately 2:06.
If you are interested in running a half marathon and have been covering 10k on your long run it will take you approximately 12 to 16 weeks to be adequately prepared. If your longest run is shorter than 10k you should think about running a race at least six months from now. Most half marathon distances are run during cooler weather with a spring and a fall season. Locally you can run the Quinte West Half Marathon on April 25 in Trenton, the Fall Classic Half Marathon on Sept 19 in Belleville and the County half Marathon run in conjunction with the County Marathon On Oct 3 in Picton. Other half marathons in Canada can be found at
www.sportstats.ca and
www.chiptimeresults.com and if you are interested in travelling try
www.marathonguide.com for races around North America.
The half marathon distance is the fastest growing race distance in North America. It is short enough to train for effectively and long enough to be challenging.
