Great conditions and first race of 2020 - First Half RR

The First Half is a great race to start the year and decade, and it was perfect conditions this year. Unfortunately for me I wasn't ready to race the entire distance as I was still coming back from a slower than normal build up. 

Raymond having some fun as a pacer.

The route is a small counterclockwise loop around the BC Place stadium and then heading in opposite direction from the start line to make a giant counterclockwise loop around Stanley Park. 

It's always good to start the first few kilometers easy. I was settling in and around 12km was when my body had given up. Long story short, I raced 12km at 3:55 to 4:00 per km pace and suffered the last 9km with slightly easier running going 4:20s per km. The 20km per week volume for January had enough. I was aiming for 1:24, but finished in 1:27. It's amazing how competitive and many locals came out for this race. The 3 minutes of slowing down didn't feel too good as I think a good half a dozen friends made me move backwards! Kudos to Michael S, Geoff, Drew, Tyler, Nuru and few others for staying consistent. Anyways hopefully more mileage (anything more than 20km per week ;) ) slowly will help me return to my regular form in the next month or so.

It was nice to see some spectators along course. Under the Granville bridge with the large chandelier art piece, Coach Dimitri had the best cheers, but I wanted to pull out at that point if nobody was watching! T.T Ben M. saw me finish in chill fashion, unfortunately that was as quick I could go. 

Coach Jen keeps reminding me which races I want to do well in 2020. First Half didn't make the top 10 list but it's a good to get towards racing form again. :)

I didn't realize Garmin connect and Strava wipes out a lot of the activities beyond 5 years. Maybe that's good for minimizing risks for privacy and data storage issues. I did a little digging for the 2014 and 2015 data. 

Notes:
2017 was a snow year.
2015-2016 I used to bike a lot!
The races in 2014 and 2015 we had 7 weeks lead up to the race.