My second half marathon ever and first half marathon as a pacer. As written before, my brother wanted to run a 90min half marathon and asked me to pace him.
Weather conditions weren’t a great help, actually far from it…

The Half marathon consisted of 2 laps.
With wind from the southwest this meant we would get strong headwind halfway through the lap, make a turn of about 180° and have the wind in our backs.

So after a 1.5 hour drive, a 20min wait and a 15min warm-up we felt ready to start.
With around 500 contestants it wasn’t a “fighting-for-your-spot” situation at the starting line, but after one round at the track we bottlenecked into twists and turns in Lier center, which meant watching out for other runners’ heels etc.
All in all not the best route they could lay out in my opinion, but we made the best off it.

We needed a 4:16min/km pace on average, but with all the turns it was hard to run consistent.
After about 3km we noticed we set out too fast, but with a 4:12 average we surely did not burn ourselves out at the start.

After the city centre came the feared part with head wind.
It was brutal… I tried to catch as much wind as possible, so my brother could keep fresh, but our timing dropped to about 4:30. Luckily it was only 2 kilometers.
After that we made the turn (up a small hill D:) and had the wind in our backs.
Time to breath, fill the longs, take a sip of water, recuperate and make up for lost seconds.
All the way to the half way point the wind didn’t really bother us anymore, so high hopes to finish strong later.

Second lap went the same way. First part “too fast”, but I knew we would need the seconds later on, so it was no luxury.
The windy part was worse than the first time, strong gusts were added and a heavy pouring as well, so I was really glad when we could leave it behind.
Once we had the wind in our backs it was time to recuperate again, but I could see that my brother’s energy was draining.
It was time to get everything out of him that I could get out of him!

The last kilometer he was struggling a lot, so I kept motivating him, because I knew it would be a close call.
Breathing heavily we went over the finish line in 1:30:19 according to official timing.
Our watch said 1:29:58 so my brother was happy. And he happy = me happy.

I had some juice left, which makes me really happy with my current form.
Pacing at “high velocity” isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but it was fun!