a strange marathon

12 months ago today I was at one of my lowest points in a long time. I was bored at work, Gold Coast marathon had been a major disappointment, I had an injury in one knee and was about to discover an injury in the one one. To top it all off I was told I had cancer in a rather delicate place. (If you look back in the archives you can read about it).

On the day of the 2009 marathon, I read about all the people doing PBs in what sounded like glorious weather and it did nothing to help my mood, considering I had just had an operation to remove something better left unsaid.

I felt my body was falling apart, like I was losing control.

The 12 months since then have been a pretty dour struggle to get back that sense of control, largely by running myself back into marathon shape, as well as getting a new job and a few other things which I won’t burden you with.

So today’s marathon, which I consciously knew was just another race, held a much greater significance for me, sub-consciously. I might not have been thinking about it, but my body was, giving me stomach cramps and nausea for the 48 hours leading up to the race.

Then, on the start line, as the siren blew to start the race, I inexplicably starting weeping. I don’t think anyone noticed, and it was over by the time we hit St Kilda road, but it really set up a strange race.

Then at the end, when I almost always feel emotional, I just couldn’t stop crying. Not sad crying, the sort of crying you do in moments of great emotional release.

I take this to mean the experience of running this race did what I needed it to.

The running itself left a little to be desired. I ran well for the first half, then continued pretty well until the 31km mark. From that point on I knew I’d reached the race proper, but I shifted into a nice fast rhythm going up St Kilda road, with lots of space around me, and concentrated on counting down the k’s.

It was a nice rhythm, but a fragile one. At Toorak road we merged with the half marathoners and all of a sudden I was ducking and weaving, here jumping onto the verge for 5 metres, there grumpily saying “marathoner coming through”.

It really shook me up. I slowed and couldn’t get my pace going, even when they half marathoners diverged. In the end I ran 3 hours 3 minutes, which is my second best time. I do think I could have run faster, but I’m not overly worried.

I know I’m never going to run 2 hours 10, or even 2 hours 40, and I can live with that. I think a 3 hour marathon is about as fast as this old body will go. So, I’m not overly worried.

I saw a few bloggers and denizens of the forum world before, during and after the race. Cilla, Steve, Tiger boy, PJ and others.

Now it’s a beautiful afternoon, which I’m spending gardening with the kids and trying to fend off nausea and dehydration headaches.

Finally freaking out

Well, it took a while,  but the pre-marathon madness hit in force this morning. After weeks of serenity and confidence, I woke convinced I was coming down with a terrible cold.

To be fair, I did feel sniffly and headachey and I had spent 2 hours in meetings with my sick boss the previous afternoon.

It all added up, and what it added up to was not good: a sick marathon this Sunday. Months of training wasted.

I spent the day shoving industrial quantities of vitamin c into myself and loudly cursing fate.

It was jaykay who solved it with some excellent Facebook-delivered advice (“htfu”) which I have duly followed.

I am now of the belief this is wholly psychosymatic and that everything will be better after a good night’s sleep.

It’s a theory.

Sometimes I hate this marathon business.

BTW, this is the longest post I’ve done on my android phone. Apologies for any spelling problems.

updates

Something is amiss in the land of “social media” and things “2.0”, or at least the blogosphere. To be perfectly accurate, there is something amiss with that small section of the blogosphere that emanates from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and concerns itself with distance running of the decidedly amateur standard.

Yes, that icon of the running fraternity, emruns, has threatened to retire from the business (blogging, not running).

I too, have been a touch on the lazy side. I’m not having a crisis, I just have a new job, plenty to do, and with the weather like it is, sitting hunched over a computer screen for hours at a time doesn’t seem an enticing proposition.

Last Saturday we had a barbecue for the grand final replay. It was such a lovely day, I don’t think I saw more than 2 minutes of the match itself. Then Sunday was, if anything, lovelier.

I could learn to like this spring stuff, if it wasn’t for the small matter of a marathon to run this weekend. I have no desire to run 42km in a heatwave, and given I’ve done all my training at sub-antactic temperatures, anything over about 16 degrees counts as a heatwave.

Oh well, I’m sure I’ll cope. At least it gives me an incentive to finish quickly, to get out of the heat.

Must go, I’ve only checked the weatherchannel website 20 times today.

not going pre-marathon mad yet

It’s 9 days until the Melbourne Marathon, which makes it smack-bang in the middle of “pre-marathon madness” territory. Well, it usually does, but not this time around.

Usually, you’d find me at work getting a bit frantic doing one or all of:

1. frantically scouring the web for formulae to calculate my goal time,
2. obsessing about how much training I’ve done, or not done
3. trying to print out pacing notes that I can read while I’m running (that doesn’t work – they’re either to big to carry comfortably, or too small to read while running)
4. coming down with imaginery colds and flu

As it is, I’ve avoided all of that.

1. I know pretty much what pace I want to run – f**k’n fast – PB fast.
2. I know I’ve done quite a lot of training
3. I’m not going to worry about a wrist band for pacing. I’ll stick with the 3 hour pacers until it no longer matters
4. If I get sick, I get sick

The only thing I have done is check the 10 day weather forecasts about 10 times a day. (Latest word: Rain, a low of 12 and a high of 21, but it seems to fluctuate wildly).

fresh air

After Wednesday night’s trip to the gym, I’ve been back to running in the outdoors again. This is as it should be.

I mean, sure the sight of me in my shorts sweating and puffing away is not to everyone’s taste, but that doesn’t mean I should be shut away in a room. Runners deserve to be free, damnit.

That being said, mid-way through yesterday’s long run, I began to long for a closed in, airless, warm room to run in. I was heading up hill, into the wind, feeling tired and with a good 12km to go, most of that at least partially into the wind.

The things we do to ourselves.

Anyway, it turned out to be fractionally less than 33km in 2 hours 30, exactly. That’s okay.

I’m starting to think about goal times for the race in October. As always, I’m vacillating between a comfortable pace and going for a PB.

An update: Hell on earth
I’ve think I’ve found a new contender for “least pleasant place to be on earth”. It is: the queue for MacDonalds at the local shopping centre food court, with two kids under the age of 5, both of whom are feral from being stuck inside on a rainy day, one of whom knows she wants “chippies” but can’t decide if she wants to go to Red Rooster instead, and the other one is still complaining because he wants “white” juice, which turns out, after 5 minutes fierce argument, to be chocolate milk in a white packet. I should add, both kids were running free, there were dodgy guys standing about in the queue and disapproving “proper”-looking mothers walking past with well behaved kids in prams.

Not good.

marathon gear arrives already

It never rains, but it pours. (So I’m told – right now out my window it looks like something in the middle, but hey-di-ho!)

Anyway, back in 2007 I ran the Melbourne Marathon and I spent the week before the event stressing my tiny mind because my race number didn’t arrive until the Friday before the event. I ended up driving half-way across town to pick up the package from the courier company’s office (they had delivered it to the wrong address – the dopes!).

Fast forward 3 years, and now the same organisation has managed to send me my race number and booklet by August the 9th – more than 2 months early. The mind boggles. How can they even know what the race details are going to be 2 months in advance? I don’t know what I’m going to have for dinner tonight! I don’t even know what I’m having for lunch and it’s 12:20 as I write!

They are clearly organisers of the first-water. I am in awe of them.

This awesome efficiency did, however, freak me out somewhat. At this stage – 2 months out from race day – my mind is very much focussed on training. Building up the long runs, doing some tempo sessions, learning to tie my shoes, that sort of thing. I haven’t got to the stage of fixing a goal time in mind; I’m not interested in tapering. The actual event is a fair way off in my mind.

To read something that says stuff like “you must leave your bags in spot x” or “toilets are in spot y” is quite worrying. Oh my god, I haven’t prepared for this at all!

My solution last night was to put all this stuff to the back of my mind, and on the top of the chest of drawers where I can’t see it, until late September.

Too scary.

Running
It’s a bit gloomy and old-school Melbourne-winter-y out there today, and it looks like continuing for much of the week, if the weather forecast is to be believed. I don’t think I’m going to be too happy heading out for a 90 minute slog in a downpour later in the week, so I decided to do the mid-week long run this morning. I was up at 5am and out of the house by 5:20 (I was awake, but in no hurry – the “don’t wannas” were in town again this morning) and out for a nice healthy 20.8km of fun. It was a bit hilly in spots, and not overly fast, but at least it was done. Here it is on mapmyrun.com.

muscle memory good, brain memory bad

I’ve been thinking about muscle memory today, mainly because (despite wikipedia) I don’t really understand how it works.

Take me, for example. I find if I go for a hard run that finishes with a good long spell of fast running, when I run the next day my legs seem to feel comfortable running at the fast pace and will go fast even if stiff and sore.

Like yesterday, I ran the last 8km of my long run at a fast pace. Today was supposed to be an easy recovery run, but I ended up running at 4:20 pace for 13km.

Is it possible muscles have a really brief (less than 36 hours) memory?

Melbourne Marathon
My muscle memory might be good, but that doesn’t extend to my actual memory. I bit the bullet last Friday and entered the Melbourne Marathon. At the time I said to myself “must blog about this” and I fully intended to.

I just plain forgot.

Anyway, I entered the marathon, despite some misgivings (memories of what the last 5kms is like – do I really want to put myself through that again?).

I’m entrant number 3701. Let’s hope that’s the bib number, not the race position.

the marathon and TV don’t mix

I was flicking through the channels last night, trying not to watch Australia losing the Ashes, when I was pleasantly surprised to come across the women’s marathon from the Berlin IAAF World Championships. What’s more, the leaders were about 30km into the race, meaning I had an hour or so of good, if sweaty, competition to take in.

It didn’t take me long, however, to remember just why I don’t like watching marathons on TV. Don’t get me wrong, it was quite a good race and the women were doing well. But the coverage! How irritating.

It didn’t help that the German TV kept interrupting the telecast with “educational” inserts showing the local uni, statues and a sequence apparently showing a German chorus line girl getting dressed up (or down?) to go on stage.

That last one caused a great deal of sniggering between the adolescent male dickheads they had doing the commentary. “Ooooh, this one’s my favourite (snigger, snigger).” “I’m going to the Jamaican party tonight, I hope she’ll be there!”.

Whatever….

Then they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about Kara Goucher. She’s quite a good runner, and ended up coming 10th, but she never really looked like winning. She did, however, look quite attractive, or at least as attractive as you can 35km into a marathon….

Then there was the endless oh-so-amusing and not-at-all-patronising talk about people from Bhutan and other small countries who were way behind. Geez! They were all running sub-3 hour marathons. Have some respect!

With about 5km to go, the commentators finally, and with a note of disappointment in their voices, conceded the lovely Kara wasn’t going to make a heroic sprint to the lead, and decided they had better concentrate on a pack of 4 who were going to win. They were being led by a Russian woman, followed by runners from Japan, China and Ethiopia.

The stage was set for a good finish. Cue ad-break.

When we got back from the ad-break, the Russian leader was nowhere to be seen. Literally. She had been dropped and was fading fast. What a time to take a bloody ad-break!

What made it worse was that every ad seemed to be from some people exhorting me to “Go veg, save the planet”. No thanks. I’ll only go veg if I’m allowed to eat pork chops.

Running
No time for a long run over the weekend, so I did shorter runs on Saturday and Sunday. About 27km all up.