Back into it

Some steady, consistent, running post-Sydney in the lead up to the Gold Coast half marathon - the next stop on this quest.

Having emerged from Sydney largely unscathed (physically at least), and with a few easy 5K’s in the week after the race, I’m back into solid training and repeating the final six weeks of Hal Higdon’s advanced half marathon program. I blew up on a couple of those sessions in the weeks before Sydney, so it will be interesting to see if the corrections and precautions I’m making this time around will improve the outcome.

So far, it’s so good, albeit with a minor hiccup on a 6.5K run last Friday which was designed to be run at slightly faster than half-marathon pace. I started to conk out at 4.5K and had to slow down for a bit, but managed to regain some composure and finished strongly enough. I was therefore a little nervous with the scheduled one hour, forty-five minute run the next day, with the last 25 minutes or so to be run at half marathon pace. But I absolutely nailed it and added a sprint finish for good measure, clocking up 17.73K in the process.

I’ve also decided to add a weights session every Wednesday now, assisted by a trainer at my local gym. It’s been quite punishing and not something I’ve been all that keen to pursue previously. But I think it might have some beneficial impact with the weight and building some core strength, so we’ll stick at it and see what happens. And I’ve taken to sprinting for 400-500 metres at the end of the scheduled 5K runs to get the heart rate rapidly cranking up on what is otherwise a reasonably straightforward jog. It feels good to be conditioning myself to that sort of speed.

But, most radically, I’ve now decided to do one session a week outdoors.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I do all my training on a treadmill at the gym (Camperdown Fitness in Sydney’s inner west - feel free to drop by and say hi! if you’re ever in the neighbourhood at the crack of dawn most days). I suppose I quite like the precision that running on a treadmill offers and the ease with which individual sessions can be incrementally amped up over time. I also like the ‘give’ in the running surface and the inoculation it tends to provide against wear and tear and injuries generally, and of not having to worry about the logistics of carting around water, keys and other essentials.

Strangely enough, it’s also quite a social environment, even though I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to any of the other runners/joggers/walkers in my entire time there, and only very rarely acknowledged their existence. But I do like the camaraderie associated with sharing a somewhat arduous endeavour at an odd hour with my fellow humans and of occasionally peeping over and checking out how fast they’re running and on what sort of incline (and momentarily feeling either awestruck or just ever so slightly superior).

And I love the passing parade too. The regulars who look the part, who seem to have been doing this all their lives, and who exude grace, confidence and purpose in their running. And then there’s the oncer’s. Those people of all shapes, sizes and ages who seem to pop in once, get quickly flushed-faced with the effort, and never seem to return. Perhaps they come back at other times, or maybe I’m just hopeless with remembering them. I do hope they keep at it. The changing of the seasons is equally fascinating. There’s an obviously inverse relationship between the early morning temperature, or the amount of rain, and the number of vacant treadmills.

But relying exclusively on the treadmill does come at a price. For example, I really felt the burn in my quads and hamstrings during and after the Sydney run. It was as if they were wondering what on earth this running business was all about. And it also meant that Sydney was the first time I’d actually run downhill since the City to Surf in August 2014 - a full nine months previously! Maybe that had something to do with the leg soreness.

My outdoor circuit will be the famed (locally at least) Bay Run in Sydney’s inner west. It loops around the shores of picturesque Iron Cove Bay, which is a sort of tributary to the slightly more picturesque Sydney Harbour. It’s just on seven kilometres long and, from past experience, tends to get a little crowded on Sundays when I plan to run it, but it’s very enjoyable and, I hope, will add some value to my training.

No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.