gorgeous Half Marathon

I did the Hong Kong Half Marathon www.hkmarathon.com
It was a very humid early morning when the usual huge crowd of 40k runners gathered in Nathan Road for the start. The HK marathon is a sort of running festival with 3 races of 10k, a Half and a Full marathon, with different starts from 530am onwards.
I felt good in the warm up even if I was really worried about doing a good race because it is many years that I failed in Half, normally fading after 15km.
The race strategy was to race at 175bpm until 10k, take advantage of the downhill strech leading to the west tunnel and than push the remaining energy in the final terribly hilly 5km.
I normally run with a HRM, I find it very useful in longer races to avoid overspeed in the earlier stages.
--> does someone else run with a HRM ?

Going back to the race, it all went extremely well, at perfection
I was very relaxed in the first 10k, the heart was in the low 170s and the pace around 3'44". I struggled a little in the next 5k, the road was slightly uphill and front wind. Luckily I was together with a guy that paced me quite well and I hanged up well. He was very fast going downhill but slower uphill.
Then we entered the western tunnel (or better on the terrible climb going out..), I felt still good and I start to hammer: I dropped the group I was in and catched soon other runners.
At the end I close in 1h18 WOW !!
The training. Did really pay off
I must say thanks to the 11:51:41 runs and the long runs: they really gave me the endurance and the aerobic power.
I must really praise the change of training style done in the past months: less (much less) fast intervals and more LT runs
I did not make any VO2 max workout or sprint intervals