Friday, October 11, 2013

Ross' Last First Marathon Blog Post - probably

Date of First Marathon: Sunday 22nd September 2013
Date Today: Saturday 12th October 2013

Yup, it's taken me quite a while to get around to writing what will be my last blog post on this topic.... unless I have any further reflections, ideas, etc. Which is fairly likely knowing me reasonably well as I do.

My family and I drove up from Melbourne to Sydney (about 9 hours total), with an overnighter in a farmstay en route. The "highlight" (for the wrong reasons) of the trip up there was my 8 year lad getting the tip of his finger chewed by a horse. Not the horse's fault of course. Just that my son hasn't yet perfected the technique of offering up a flat hand to a horse when feeding carrots. Fingers were offered up first. Lesson painfully learnt.

We stayed with lovely friends (thanks Janine!) in the beachside suburb of Warriewood, about 40 minutes north of the city.

Other than cutting down on the naughty stuff (chocolate, alcohol, crisps, etc) I wasn't massively focused on my nutrition in the lead up to the run. So it was only in the last 36 hours or so that I started to load up on carbohydrates - mainly pasta. Possibly a mistake, in hindsight...

Start time for the marathon on Sunday morning was 7:20am, but participants were asked to get there an hour early. The start line was at Hopkins Park on the north side of the harbour, underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge. To get there in time and under my own steam I had to get up at about 4:40am on Sunday morning, out the door in the dark shortly after 5pm, and then a short walk to the bus stop for a 5:20am pickup. A bit brutal, but v. minor in comparison to the marathon itself.

Everything went like clockwork. There were no last minute panics in terms of my running kit, alarm clock, breakfast, catching the bus, remembering to vaseline my sensitive bits, taking ibuprofen before and during, etc.

Of course the start area was heaving with people readying themselves for the marathon and other shorter distances. The weather was fabulous - mild temperatures, blue skies. But you can never have enough portaloos when you've got loads of very excited and very hydrated people, and so I wasn't the only one making "alternative" arrangements.

The marathon started in 3 groups - A, B, and C - fast, less, fast, and not very fast at all. In the few minutes before my C group kicked off I felt unexpectedly emotional. I was just moments away from getting stuck into something I'd been training so hard for and planning over so many months. I thought about Boris, about friends and family, sponsors, all the words of support and encouragement I've received along the way, the realisation that at last I was actually doing a marathon, and about how privileged and fortunate I was to be standing there on such a beautiful day.

Start line observation: how normal everyone looked. There were men and women of all ages, colours, shapes and sizes. Just goes to show that almost anyone can run a marathon if they set their head and heart on it.

One thing I was determined to avoid was setting out too hard and fast, carried along on a wave of adrenalin and over-enthusiasm. No chance of that initially of course as walked over the start line, encouraged by some friendly fighting talk by a local media personality over the loud speaker system.

Despite lots of pre-race stretching and the slow start, my troublesome left calf muscle tightened up almost immediately. Not good! As I jogged south over the iconic Harbour Bridge I confess I was extremely worried that all my worst injury fears would be realised, and my race would be over almost as fast as it had begun.













But I still managed to take this shot on my smartphone, the same smartphone that was tracking and broadcasting my progress using Runtastic and Glympse apps.

Thankfully, the calf pain slowly eased up over the course of the event. Or perhaps it was just because everything else started aching more?

I was wearing my long pants and long sleeved shirt. With lots of people wearing shorts and t-shirts/vests I was concerned that perhaps I was overdressed for the occasion, i.e. that I might over heat? I kept reminding myself that I was wearing the kit that I felt most comfortable in during my training runs - albeit in generally chillier conditions. This fear proved to be unfounded. Indeed the weird thing was that I seemed to sweat a lot less on the day than I'd typically perspire in training runs. Perhaps I wasn't pushing myself as hard?

Everything seemed to be going reasonably well up to about 25-30km mark. I was on for a total time of around 4hr45m, comfortably under my nominal 5hr target.  But then my energy levels started dropping. I grew up hearing stories about people "hitting the wall" when running a marathon, but it wasn't like that for me. It was more a gradually increasing feeling that my remaining energy reserves were running low, and that no amount of energy drink or gel or anything else was going to make much of a difference. Apart from stopping - which of course was never an option.

My right quadriceps muscles started to get pretty sore around the same time as my energy levels were noticeably dropping, which didn't help. I probably could and should have stopped and done some stretching in an effort to ease the quad pain, but that wasn't going to change the basic v. low energy equation.

So it came down to this: start walking at a sustainable pace, or keeping jogging and start to feel a bit faint and slightly nauseous. Not a hard decision to make. So the last 10-12km was mostly speed ('ish) walking, with brief stints of jogging now and then just to check in case my energy reserves had magically recovered (they hadn't).

Check out the guy in white, race number A10383, alongside me with the Sydney Opera House in the background. He introduced himself as "Big Chris". I asked him how many marathons he's run. "110 - not including triathlons". WHAT!?!? I thought he was pulling my sore leg, but he was straight up. 57 years old. What a legend! He told me that his last marathon was about 4 years ago, and because of work commitments he'd not been able to train much for this one. But what a huge reservoir of experience to draw from! We jogged up alongside a VERY old boy who looked 80+. He asked Chris the same question and was similarly blown away by Chris' answer. "I thought I was doing pretty good on 33!" he said. Wow. How humble did I feel alongside these athletes?

Finally the end was in sight as we closed in on the Sydney Opera House. The course narrowed as we passed lots of sightseers and holidaymakers wandering around and sitting at harbourside bars and restaurants. Lots of encouraging shouts and cheers helped to keep me jogging the final 1km. Right next to the finish line was my wife and 4 gorgeous kids who'd been waiting patiently there to see their crazy Dad for 1 hour. My race time didn't matter, so I took the chance to hug and kiss them all before crossing the line and finishing my first marathon in the shadow of one of the most iconic and beautiful buildings on the planet. 5hrs15m.

Post-marathon Reflections

THANK YOU to my sponsors. Nearly $2k raised for Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick kids. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Screenshot from Runtastic
I didn't get a single blister or any chaffing problems. A testament to good equipment and preparation.

In many ways I'm not surprised I ran out of steam after about 3.5 hours. This was the longest time I had ever run in training, as dictated by the training plan I was sticking to when I wasn't inured. So anything longer than 3.5 hours was always going to be in the realm of the unknown. From a physiological perspective I'd love to better understand what I could have done differently to have kept my energy levels up for longer. I'm thinking a combination of 1) More training. I managed to complete just under 70% of the training sessions on the plan. 2) Better nutrition in the week leading up to the race, i.e. more consistent carbo-loading.

It took me about 7-10 days for my body to feel post-marathon 100% normal again.

Will I run another marathon? Never say never, but probably not for a while. For me, the #1 reason for not running another is the time commitment required to train properly: a minimum of 3-4 sessions per week, taking perhaps 8-12 hours per week if you include preparing to train and the post-session activities (stretching, showering, etc.). When you've got your own small business and, more importantly, a wife and 4 kids, that's a lot of "selfish" time. I want to keep on running (hip problems notwithstanding), but now I want to share it with my family on less insane runs of 5 or 10km.
Screenshot from Runstatic


Friday, September 20, 2013

Spare calf anyone?

My calf muscle problem... is a problem again. Didn't want to say anything (hoping that by not talking about it, it would go away) but on my 1 hour run last Sunday, I tweaked it.

I was jogging along a street on a mild downhill incline and I spotted something out of the corner of my left eye. It was nothing... just something that caused me to twist my body to my left while bringing my left leg down onto the ground and thereby twisting it too. And that was enough to feel a fairly sharp pain in my calf muscle. I was able to jog on, but only by taking shorter stride lengths.

I went for my last, gentle, pre-marathon run this morning (5 days after the above), and I could feel the calf muscle niggling away in the background, taunting me to run a bit harder so that it could give me a full-on TWANG.

On one level I'm incredibly annoyed and frustrated, for obvious reasons... like, I don't know, running a marathon in less than 36 hours. Yeh, that could be it.

On another, I don't care. I'm "bored" of getting injured. There's no time to do anything about it, so it's time to just suck it up, and get on with it. It's a feeling of resignation, of acceptance.

Other than RICE between now and the start of the marathon (which might help a tad), I plan to strap my calf very heavily on race day. Bring it on. Worst case - I walk the remainder of the course. So long as I don't take longer than 6 hours I won't get disqualified for being too slow.

Monday, September 16, 2013

More lovely sponsors please!

4 days to go, sitting at 41% towards my self-imposed fundraising target of AUD$3k.

http://www.justgiving.com/Ross-Gerring

Perhaps my offer to wax my hairy chest and post the video to Youtube if I hit 100% by race day is proving to be a DIS-incentive for people to sponsor me?! I hope not!

Can you spare a few quid, dollars, etc? The cash may be going to Great Ormond St Hospital in the UK, but of course a treatment breakthrough at GOSH is, ultimately, a treatment breakthrough for kids the world over.

All currencies are welcome.

Thanks so much.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Tapering and Taped

Apologies to small children and those of a nervous disposition for the following bum shot. But in the spirit of "a picture is worth a thousand words" I thought I'd stick this one in. What you're seeing is a result of my local physio deciding that my hip pain is due to my "side bum" muscles being weak relative to my "back bum" muscles, allowing excessive lateral movement in my hip joint. So he taped me up very tightly, like a belt, in an attempt to reduce that lateral movement.

It seems to have helped a bit. I've done two short runs since getting taped - a 40 minute and a 30 minute - and the pain is manageable. And by manageable I mean that ibuprofen is, and will be, my best friend.

I'm in the "tapering" phase of my training program... the winding down, the calm before the storm. The theory is that all the hard work is done, and now it's about ensuring that I'm in the best, most rested shape I can be in for race day - which is a week today as I type.

Despite the hip issues, I'm feeling excited and strangely confident about the marathon. That said, I think there's a huge amount of naivety in my confidence :-)

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Hip pain

On my 2hr30m run last Sunday I picked up a niggling pain in the lower right side of my back, but perhaps in the hip joint region. I was hoping it was just fatigue-related and that it would quickly better with a couple of days rest like a few of my other aches and pains have. Bad news... it feels like it's getting worse. Not good. I had a 30m jog scheduled on my training program today, but my gut feeling is that running on it will do more harm than good. So I've cancelled the run and booked physio for tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed it's a minor injury with only about 12 sleeps until race day! I will not be denied!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Why haven't I lost more weight?

So a few months back I weighed in at 100kg, and I was expecting to lose at least 5kg, perhaps as much as 10kg. But I've got down to around 96-97kg, and haven't budged from there. A bit baffled.

  • I've burnt loads more calories through exercise in the last few months than I've done for a very long time.
  • Unless I'm in complete denial, I don't feel that I've increased my calorie intake over the last few months. Indeed I reckon if anything I've reduced it. 
  • I've (almost completely) cut out chocolate for the last month'ish.
  • I was a moderate drinker of alcohol in the first place, and I'm purposely drinking even less now.
  • All my coffees are "skinny".
  • I normally eat a healthy, high fibre breakfast with fruit, typically more fruit for lunch, and a good home cooked meal in the evening (thanks wifey!).
Bearing in mind I'm no expert in this area, the only rational explanations I can think of are:
  • The old "muscle weighs more than fat" reason, i.e. the effect of my running has been to increase muscle relatively more than it's burnt fat.
  • At my age (45) muscle mass/density is a lot less than when I was in my 20s, and you need muscle to burn fat, therefore with less muscle to do the job, burning fat requires a lot more effort than it used to.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Statistics

Here are my running stats (NOT including cycling and swimming), i.e. total distance covered, according to Runtastic:

April - 8.74km
May - 8.71km
June - 31.73km
July - 73.28km
August  - 156.59km

June and July should have both been 100km+ had I stuck to the program, but injuries dictated otherwise. So a poor/slow start, but in the zone now.