Who am I?

Well, how about we start with who I’m not.

I’m not a born runner. Nor have I ever had any real pretensions to athleticism. Looking back, my post-teenage life seems to have comprised reasonably lengthy spurts of consistent and sustained physical activity, invariably followed by years of relative inactivity bordering on sloth.

The first of these spurts involved cycling around Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra most every morning for a few years while an undergraduate student at the great Australian National University.

After relocating to Sydney in the early 1990’s, I happened upon the annual City-to-Surf 14 kilometre road race from the CBD to Bondi Beach. In 1991, I stood - agog - adjacent to the startline watching the mass of humanity take off down William Street. The next year, I was amongst it, finishing in a quite respectable time of 86:07.

In the years since, I’ve missed competing only twice. The first was in 2000 when I was too sick to risk it, and the second in 2011 when I was in Melbourne having messed up the date of the race. In 21 City-to-Surf appearances, my times - in minutes - have ranged from 75:51 in 2006 to 188:56 in 1999 (when I was walking with a pram).

To put it all in some sort of perspective, the best time for the journey is held by my compatriot - the legendary Steve Moneghetti - who came within a whisker of breaking 40 minutes with his time of 40:03. No-one else has come close.

Aside from the 1999 walk, I’ve always set out to try and record my fastest possible time, no matter how painful and soul-destroying I knew it was going to be. So, in a way, the City-to-Surf has become a barometer of my fitness over the years. And with that yardstick, the grinding 152.01 in 2002 was the undoubted low point.

But as a full-time post-graduate student in 2003/04, I resumed a reasonably healthful life and even managed to complete five marathons between 2005 and 2007. I don’t know about your experiences with marathons you might have run, but I remember large segments of each of mine - the good, the bad and the ugly - as if I’d just run them this morning.

For the record, they were:

Sydney - September 2005 (4:40:43)
Honolulu - December 2005 (4:32:43)
Canberra - April 2006 (4:07:01)
Chicago - October 2006 (4:04:12)
London - April 2007 (4:32:40)

Back then, each of these races was designed as a link in a chain that would inexorably lead me to the holy grail - a BQ. But a disappointing run in an unusually warm London marathon, which coincided with a house move, work pressures blah, blah, blah (all the usual stuff), morphed into another prolonged period of inactivity.

This lasted all the way through to 2013 when I decided to snap out of it and set myself a goal of breaking 1:50 for the 2014 Gold Coast Half Marathon. In 2006, I’d managed 1:50:07 in that wonderful event, despite finishing well in front of the 1:50 pacer who’d been helping me along most of the way.

It was not to be.

Even with a solid training program, and the shedding of a reasonable percentage of surplus body weight, the sub-1:50 goal proved too ambitious, as I guessed it might be after several years out. Instead, I finished in a time of 2:00:21.

But I also finished with a firm belief that I was back. And the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this BQ thing could still be possible.

Let's get started!

This blog chronicles my quest to run a marathon in a time that will qualify me for entry into the Boston marathon.

And what better day for my first post than the day of the 2015 version of the great race (if, like me, you're on Australian time).

I decided to start it after having some success with the first ‘Quest’ blog I started a couple of years back. That one chronicles my efforts to break the seemingly impregnable world record high score on a 1980s arcade video game known as ‘Pengo’ ('PengoQuest’, if you’re interested).

So even with an abundance of desire, perhaps it’s the case that putting something in writing and sharing it with all you good folk out there adds that little extra motivation to get the job done. It certainly worked for Pengo.

In a way, this is probably just another running blog, albeit I’ve not really read too many others. While I'll endeavour to be as eloquent and interesting as possible, it’s probably going to get a little dry and tedious from time to time. I certainly won’t be submitting it for whatever the blogosphere’s equivalent of the Booker prize is. Doubtless too, there'll be a few gaps, perhaps some despondency, hopefully some steady progress, and - with a fair amount of effort and luck - some ecstasy!

Well, as they say, the longest journey starts with the first step.

So strap yourselves in, do a couple of quick stretches, have a sip of water, and let’s see if we can’t get to the start line in Hopkinton on Patriots’ Day sometime in the next few years.