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.
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.
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| Screenshot from Runtastic |
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.
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| Screenshot from Runstatic |
