Comparing marathons

(Apologies to those that couldn't really care less about marathons. Go read something else!)

I dug out the times recorded at my previous best marathon - Gold Coast 2008. At that race, times were recorded at 5km intervals, so some sort of pacing information could be plotted, similar to what I did the other day, but without quite as fine a granularity. This is the result, compared to Auckland last month:

My summary of what it shows:

• My pace seemed steadier in the first half of GC - possibly because of having no hills. The first half of Akl is relatively hilly.
• I started slowing down from about 15km already... and it just got worse.
• Somewhere between 25 and 30km I was starting to hurt
• Shortly after 30km is where I started walking - and walked most of the rest of the way.
• A slow and easy first half at Akl ended up being a slightly faster time overall.