Two sleeps until the Melbourne half and it’s good to be getting back into a racing environment.
After that embarrassing City-to-Surf sleep-in back in August and missing the Harbour Bridge 3.8K (on 18 September) during my back injury hiatus, I haven’t raced since the Gold Coast half on 3 July. And while, technically, this isn’t going to be a ‘race’ for me, it still looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck - and I’m still going to be nervous come race morning. I’m a bit nervous now, actually, although it probably has more to do with making sure I get to the airport early enough in time for tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) 7:00am flight to Melbourne than anything else.
I’ve had three solid weeks of running since returning from my back problem, with weekly kilometre totals of 37.13K, 30.84K and 36.02K. This part of the schedule corresponds to weeks 8-10 of Higdon’s 12-week advanced half marathon program, and if all goes to plan, I should be clocking up close to 70 kilometres in the coming week before the final week’s taper leading into the Auckland goal race on Sunday 30 October.
The only training glitch was last Saturday with my scheduled 2 hour 10 minute run. It started out well enough, but as I came up to the first hour, I was bombarded with some quite negative thoughts and quickly lost motivation to see out the run. So I stopped at exactly one hour, with 9.4 kilometres on the clock, jumped on the stair machine for 20 minutes as some sort of punishment and as a vain attempt to salve my conscience, and went home. It was the first time I’d given up like that since a week of missed sessions due to fatigue and motivation problems just over a year ago. It was as disappointing as it was inexplicable, but I guess these things happen from time to time, and you just plough on.
By contrast, the last couple of days looked like being particularly tough - especially today’s 8.1 kilometre run at ‘race pace’ (which, for me, equates to 8 x 1K's at a progressively increasing speed of 10.8km/h to 11.5km/h, with a final 100 metres at 11.6km/h - all at a gradient of 0.7%). But I absolutely smashed it. It was one of those sensational runs you get every now and again where you just don’t get tired and feel like you could go forever. I'm thinking that maybe my brain must have been offering me some sort of compensation for forcing me to pull the plug on that run less than a week before.
Anyway, the Melbourne race kicks off at 8:00am on Sunday 16 October, and assuming I make my flight, my plan is simply to lock onto the 2 hour 20 minute pacers and follow them to the end. No heroics. No surges. No final lap sprint around the famed Melbourne Cricket Ground. It’s all about staying disciplined and focussed and just seeing out the distance.
The Sunday weather forecast at the moment is cloudy with a minimum of 17 degrees, a maximum of 22 and a 90% chance of rain, although mostly in the afternoon and evening. I would have preferred a cooler start, and the cloud means it’s probably going to be a little more humid than I’d like, but Melbourne really is notorious for the changeability of its weather, so anything is possible.
I’ll pick up my race bib at the race expo when I arrive there tomorrow and take it easy at my CBD hotel for the rest of the day. I was in Melbourne a few weeks ago to watch some football matches so I had enough of a wander around town back then to satisfy my curiosity. This time, it’s just business, so it will be a very quiet day and an early night.
I’ll let you know how I fared.
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