Auckland Half Marathon 2011

Auckland turned on another beautiful day for marathon day this year - perfect sunshine, light breezes, temperatures that would have got up to the high teens by late morning.  I was only doing the half this year - I haven't got nearly enough work in to consider doing the full.
After some horror stories of people missing the start because the ferries across to Devonport were too full to transport everyone, I decided to be safe and get one of the earlier ferries - ended up on the 4:30am one.  Seems like a bit of a silly time to go for a cruise on the harbour really.  I then ended up sitting around for a couple of hours in Devonport ferry terminal until it was race time.
The race itself was more crowded than I would really like - 7000+ runners means it was always busy and you had to weave in and out a little bit the whole way.  The North Shore section of the race is really quite hilly - more than I remember from the full last year (that part of the course is the same).  The second half of the race showed that I hadn't really done enough miles - I had intended to be able to kick on a little, but didn't really have much energy left.  Oh well.  1hr48-ish will have to do for this year.  It's a PB by somewhere around 5min, so I can't really complain!