Race Report: Melbourne Half Marathon - Sunday 18 October 2015

Change of plan folks!

As scheduled, I arrived in Melbourne early on Saturday afternoon and headed straight for the marathon expo at the famed Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to downgrade my race registration from the half marathon to the 10K - something I’d foreshadowed in my last post due to my dodgy left calf.

I arrived there in plenty of time and joined the back of the well sign-posted ‘downgrade/upgrade’ queue. It happened to be an unusually lengthy and slow-moving queue, and as I stood there in contemplation, I decided I wouldn’t downgrade after all and would stick with my half marathon entry. Maybe it was some sort of epiphany. Maybe I got caught up in the hype surrounding these sorts of occasions. Or maybe I simply thought these sorts of opportunities don’t come along that often - so just do it!

Whatever it was, I stepped out of the queue.

I then decided that my race strategy would be to try and find the 2:20 pacers (the slowest of the scheduled half marathon pacers) and follow them around the course - even if I was feeling during the race that I could handle a faster pace. A 2:20 half marathon was the sort of pace I knew I could handle and it would probably give me a good chance of finishing without placing a huge risk on the calf. Of course, this strategy also exposed me to the perennial risk of not actually locating the pacers at the start-line, but I convinced myself that I was due some good luck on that score.

So having made the decision, I decided to buy some calf compression garments that were on sale at the expo to see if they could help. The salesperson who quickly took my $50 thought they might. I wore them around for the rest of the day to get used to them, and they seemed fine.

The next morning, as I stepped out of my hotel for the 20 minute walk to the starting area, I had a feeling it was going to be a good day. The weather was just about perfect, at around 12 degrees, still and overcast. As I got nearer the start, I spotted some groups of balloons off into the distance signalling that the various pacing groups were already lining up. It was actually an unusually simple exercise to find the 2:20 pacing team and I squeezed my way a short distance through the large crowds to end up standing right next to them. I introduced myself to one of them - an Indian chap, probably in his early 30s - and thanked him in anticipation for his selflessness. His colleagues were a tallish woman in her late 20s and an Asian guy of roughly the same age and they all wore ostentatious timing/GPS equipment - which gave people like me every confidence that the 2:20 goal would be achieved as efficiently as possible.

At 8:00am, after a stirring rendition of the national anthem, the gun fired. Two minutes or so later, the 2:20 bus crossed the start line and we were underway.

My plan was simply to run the entire race off the shoulder of the Indian pacer and see what happened. I’d never run in Melbourne before and didn’t quite appreciate how flat most of that part of the city is. The first half of the course especially was particularly flat, meandering along some very wide streets and then diverting into Albert Park, alongside a lake and at one point passing what looked like the F1 garages. Albert Park is home to the Australian F1 Grand Prix, but none of the road we were running on resembled what I thought a race track would look like.

There was a turn-around point at around 11K and some out-and-back sections, before heading back along the main thoroughfare toward the city. All the while, I was shadowing my pacer buddy, although at about 14K, I started running more alongside the woman (sadly, I can’t remember any of their names) who was a little more talkative. Not that I was talking much, but it was good to hear other people sharing their experiences and often articulating what I was feeling. While I was still running well, I could feel some fatigue coming on around the 17K mark. That’s roughly the point when you just want it to be over - there’s less than 5K to go, you’ve run so many 5K’s before in training, so just get the damned thing over with!

Around that stage, I moved ahead of the pacers by a few metres to take advantage of some less crowded running space and perhaps a slight change of scenery. I also had in the back of my mind that it might be an idea to bank some time in case I needed to slow more than I really wanted to at any point over the final stages of the race.

At 19K, and with the MCG in sight, the course started misbehaving, with a few undulations and longer uphill sections over bridges and the like presenting themselves. While it was nothing like that awful climb up to Observatory Hill at around the 38K mark of my very first marathon (Sydney, 2005 - I vividly remember every excruciating detail!), it was a bit of a surprise and seemed to catch out a few people who started to walk. On one of the corners, I looked back and noticed I had about 20 metres on the pacing group, so I slowed a fraction to recover.

Then all of a sudden, the course went beneath the MCG and around another corner before emerging into the stadium itself, where quite a noisy and appreciative crowd had gathered. The final 300 metres around the outside of the grassy surface were something to remember, and were punctuated by the pacers - who by that time had caught up - urging all those around to quicken stride to make 2:20. While I ran with them over that final lap, I wasn’t too worried, given that I knew they were all going off the gun time, when my only interest was the net time. Having started alongside them and taken a couple of minutes to cross the start line, I knew my net time would be well under 2:20.

As it happened, I crossed the line quite steadily in 2:20:13. Normally, I try and run as fast as I possibly can when the finish is in sight with the aim of collapsing over the line in a state of complete exhaustion. But this time, I was happy to linger a little and take in something of the scene as I trotted around. I was also very conscious - as I was throughout the entire race - of not aggravating the calf problem with any sudden accelerations. And on that front, it held up remarkably well.

Immediately I finished, I came across the pacers and took some time to acknowledge their efforts. Although they actually seemed to be more pleased for me, which just goes to show the calibre of people we’re dealing with here. Great job guys!

For the record, my net time ended up at 2:18:04. And my finishing position was 7,322nd of the 9,592 total finishers (the last place getter, a female in the 20-39 age group named Stacey Cadman, came home in a net time of 4:33:45).

Given the disjointed lead-up to this race, and my core strategy of just running a slow, disciplined and safe half marathon, I suppose this time will inevitably go down in my running history with an asterisk next to it. But I enjoyed it immensely and it really exceeded my admittedly low expectations. The course itself was excellent and the event as a whole now probably ranks just fractionally behind the Gold Coast as my favourite run.

Reflecting back on it, I’m so pleased that the ‘upgrade/downgrade’ queue was moving so slowly and that I decided to go for it. But I’m probably equally as dismayed that, up until that point, I had convinced myself not to run it. We live and learn.

Next stop - the Big Apple on Sunday 20 March 2016.

A sorry tale ...

Well, my left leg has done it again folks. A dodgy left calf muscle this time has forced me to scrub the Melbourne half marathon attempt this weekend and instead convert my entry to the 10K event, where I’ll be aiming for a sub-60 minute finish.

When last we spoke, I was about to start putting in some reasonably heavy training weeks ahead of the Melbourne half and had flagged a couple of forthcoming events as well - the 3.5K Harbour Bridge run and a 10K time trial.

The Bridge run went quite well. It’s always fun to run across the main deck of the coathanger, and I finished in a time of 18:31. Which, amazingly, placed me 243rd of the 4,799 finishers. But after giving it a nanosecond’s thought, it occurred to me that a large proportion of the several thousand finishers were probably families walking the Bridge with prams and others equally less mobile making a day of it. If those groups were discounted, I’ve no doubt I would have finished in my usual mid-to-late pack position. But I'll take it!

The 10K time trial later that week was much more disappointing - 54:46. And in the words of the great Mr Gump - ‘That’s all I have to say about that’.

The day after, during a routine 5K training run with an increase in speed toward the end, I felt a significant tweak in the left calf muscle. It wasn’t as violent as the hamstring tear a few months ago, but it was sufficiently concerning for me to stop after 4.5K having not been able to shake it off. After a couple of physio visits that week, I tried to run again on the Thursday but stopped after it blew up after only 600 metres.

I managed a couple of very slow sessions the following week, and again this week - with two 3K gentle jogs, one today and one yesterday.

The injury is definitely on the mend, but the risk of it recurring with an increase in speed seems quite high. So with that, and the dent it’s put in my training (not to mention my confidence), I’ve decided to ditch the half and try the 10K event in Melbourne to see what happens. I also figured it’s a lot less distance to hobble home than it would be for the half marathon if things do come unstuck.

To illustrate the impact it’s had, my last seven weeks training distances have been 40.02K, 56.03K, 40.90K, 22.42K, 5.10K (first week of injury), 14.63K and 6K (final week before race).

Otherwise, my overall running base for this event hasn’t been too bad. Over the past 30 weeks, I’ve run 1,001K at an average of 33K each week, while in the past 60 weeks, the total has been 1,770K, at a weekly average of 30K. These numbers are very similar to the same periods before the ill-fated Gold Coast half marathon attempt back in July, which was aborted after the hamstring tear in the final week.

At least this time, I fly to Melbourne in the morning with something more to look forward to than a weekend in an ocean view hotel room catching up on some reading and box sets.