race report

Well, that wasn’t a terrific day. I’ll make it brief.

The race
I woke on time, ate breakfast and made it to the start with plenty of time to spare, although I had to park about 2km away. The race started suprisinly on time, so surprisingly that I forgot to turn on my stop-watch. Bugger.

The first 10km were fine, with Monaghetti and his balloons bobbing along a few metres ahead of me. Then around 15km Mona had to duck off for a pee, which messed up everyone’s timing. I went through the half in 87 minutes, which was a touch faster than I’d anticipated. From 25km I had a nasty stitch, which I thought might hurt me, but I ran through it, breathing more deeply than I normally do.

From 30km onwards I started to feel nauseous. At 34km it got really bad, and I had to walk. From then on, it was a real struggle, with frequent walk breaks, and plenty of people overtaking me.

It was upsetting, humiliating, and one of the worst bits of running I’ve done. I struggled home in 3:10.

Post race
It didn’t get any better, post race. I was up at GC on my own, so had to struggle what felt like a km to the left luggage on my own. It took a LONG time. Then there was another 2km to the car. At that stage I had no drink or food and no money to buy anything. I also had the remains of a carbo gel stuck to my shorts and my left leg – looking really dodgy.

Later on I got locked out of the hotel. Then I lost my boarding pass for the flight home. To replace it, I needed to know my booking reference number, which meant a trip to an internet kiosk, which wasn’t where it was supposed to be, meaning I had to go through security twice. Then I couldn’t find a pen to write down the number. Then it turned out I was booked on the wrong flight anyway.

I should note: at this stage I was unbelievably tired and really struggling not to lose my temper.

Then, when trying to transfer my flight my credit card got declined. Then they couldn’t move it in the system, because I’d already checked in over the internet. Then I couldn’t sleep on the plane because I was I nauseous and cramping badly.

Apart from that, it was a nice day.

Thoughts
I don’t really want to think about this much. At the end I felt devastated. I still feel like I stuffed up, like maybe I should have been able to tough out the nausea. I also think that, while I was feeling better from the brochitis, maybe my system wasn’t quite up to the demands of running a 3 hour marathon.

With 24 hours to think about it, I guess I was due a bad marathon. I’ve had a good run of races in the last few years, but the marathon is a cruel, unpredictable race. That’s part of the challenge, and why we keep coming back.

wish me luck

This is probably my last post before the marathon on Sunday, so wish me luck.

As of Friday morning, I’m feeling pretty good about things. I’m pretty damn toey though, I’ve been pacing restlessly around the office, making everyone feel uncomfortable.

Tax
I don’t know what came into me, but I’ve already done my tax (and my wife’s) for 2008-09. I downloaded the etax software on Wednesday night then did the whole process from start to finish in about 30 minutes.

So my tax was completely finished on the night of July 1. Beat that!

Next I’ll get going on my Christmas presents.

Running
I had a pleasing 9km yesterday lunchtime; also an equally pleasing sleep last night. Both the run and the sleep indicate the worst of the bronchitis is out of the way. Yay. I’ll take the dog for an easy 5km tonight (easy for me, not for her, the lazy hound).

Race news
No news is good news, other than the weather forecast remaining positive. According to weatherzone, the forecast is for a low of 7 and a high of 19, which is peachy-keen.

twitter actually useful?

I know – it doesn’t sound right. Most right-thinking people look at a site like Twitter and think “fad” and “stupid tool to soothe the egos of narcissistic politicians and Gen Y”. Trust me: in 2 years time, Twitter will be so 2009.

Because, really, who wants to know what I, or anyone else, am doing at any one point in time? My family might, occasionally, my friends and workmates – from time to time. But it’s pretty limited. If they want to know what I’m thinking, they can just ask.

So, I’m not a fan.

That being said, I’ve just stumbled on a little tool that uses twitter that’s actually moderately useful. It’s called TweetTabs.

Give it a go.

You can click on the top topics, and it will show you all the tweets on that issue. You can also search for something that interests you, and then all the tweets mentioning that will show up, as they happen.

For example, I searched for “Gold Coast Marathon” and I discovered a bunch of people feeling nervous or excited, including Anna Bligh, the Premier of Queensland.

There, that was useful wasn’t it?

Running
9km scheduled with a friend this lunchtime. I’ll do another 6 km tomorrow, and that’ll be it before the big day.

Nerves
I’m starting to get butterflies in the stomach, although it could be breakfast not agreeing with me. I remember the night before the Melbourne Marathon in 2007, my stomach was so queasy I could barely force down dinner and sleep was VERY difficult. Nerves are good, but there are limits. This race is different to normal, as there are a whole lot of extra things to get stressed about – flights, accomodation, picking up the race pack, blah blah blah.

Note to self: must chill out.

roller coaster

The emotional roller coaster that is the week before the marathon continues apace.

If you’re one of those people who have high “emotional quotient”, you might have detected between the lines, a touch of grumpiness over the last week. In fact, it was a lot more than just a “touch”; I was about as low, emotionally, as I go.

Today, however, I’m happy and bouncy and generally chipper. The antibiotics I started taking last night would seem to be extremely fast acting. Last night I had something close to a good night’s sleep – only the one early morning coughing fit. Today I’m feeling even better.

News from the Gold Coast is helping the state of mind no end. The weather forecast is for a low of 9 degrees and a high of 19, sunny and no mention of significant wind. Touch wood, that’s good news.

In amusing news, according to the Pat Carroll website, Lee Troop will be pacing a 2 hour 20 minute group. Phew! What a relief! I bet there’ll be hundreds of people lining up for that.

The 3 hour pacer, who I’ll hopefully be hanging with, is Steve Monaghetti. Assuming it’s the same guy, that’ll make things pretty cool. Though, in a way, it’s a bit intimidating, as I still have vivid memories of running a 10km PB at a fun run a few years back and feeling pretty chuffed with myself, only to learn SM finished 10 whole minutes faster than I did. And I’m running with this guy??? I might have to beg him to go easy on me.

Running
An easy 9km today over lunch-time. Easy, but odd. I headed north, and it was like running into a hurricane. Then I turned back and almost achieved unassisted human flight heading down Royal Parade into town.

Celebrity crap
Apparently we’re all so obsessed with Michael Jackson that we have to endure almost a week of breathless commentary over his life and death. At one end of the spectrum are people who seriously consider him to be “up there with Mozart and Beethoven”. By the way, if you do meet someone like that, please be so good as to call your friendly local mental hospital: there are plenty of nice white padded rooms just crying out for these sorts of people.

At the other end, you have people, mostly those who actually knew him, who have been rude enough to mention some of the nasty stuff about him. You know, his peculiar sex life, physical deformities, drug addictions, questionable approach to fathering children and immense debt. How can you possibly be 500 million dollars in debt and not be considered bankrupt?

An interesting life, I guess.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have apparently arrived in Melbourne, to make a fillum. I’m a bit disappointed about this. How is it that relatively innocent drug couriers and terrorists are given a hard time coming through customs, yet Tom Cruise, responsible for such horrors as Valkyrie and Mission Impossible 2, is let in without a question?

race guide arrives

Things proceed apace with the Gold Coast Marathon. Just recently they emailed out a race guide. To be accurate, they emailed a link to a bloody great big PDF file (6mb) which I had to download and print.

I have to say, I kind of prefer races when they send you out an actual pack with the race number and stuff, like in Run for the Kids.

Never mind. The race guide didn’t have much new to say.

I’m still feeling good about the race, which is now just under 3 weeks ago. I ran 3:06 in Hobart in January and felt at the time I could have run a bit faster. I feel in better shape today than at the same point before Hobart.

So, we’ll see.

Running
None today, a rest day.

now I’ve done it

Well, it’s officially done. There’s no backing out now.

I’ve entered the Gold Coast Marathon.

The flights are booked and paid for, the accommodation is sorted, the place in the race itself secured.

I’m number M1501 (a nice number, it fills me with confidence).

On the other hand, nerves have suddenly appeared, as it from nowhere. The second I hit “submit” on that entry form, I started to think “what have I done?”

Memories of blisters, of heart pain, of sweat and chafing, of heart rates in the 180’s 12 hours after the race finished, they all came flooding back.

It’s funny, there’s always a moment somewhere towards the end of a marathon when I think “why did I get myself into this? This will be the last one.”

But I always go back for more.

Sucker.

Running
A fartlek session around Princes Park this lunch-time. I took a roundabout way back to the office, and ended up with 14.6km. Here it is on mapmyrun.com.

Stats wise, I’m up to 279km for the month, and 1396km for the year.