I was looking forward to this race - I enjoy races where major roads are closed for the benefit of runners, and this is a good 'un. It was re-routed this year, with the first three km being along the main highway drag into town, for which they blocked off the entire inbound half of the highway.
The day dawned cool and a little drizzly, but didn't look too threatening, and by the time I left home to walk the 3 or so km to the start line, the weather had fined up and it looked very promising. Quite a way from the start I began crossing paths with what I might loosely call "serious" runners on their warm ups ... suggesting that for an 11km event they were probably running a 4-5km warm up. I'm not in that kind of league, but my 3km walking warm up did the trick nicely and I was feeling very good by the time a several-hundred strong crowd kicked off at 9 a.m.
My aim for this race was quite modest, but important I think. I had no thought of setting a fast time - my 56:45 in this event last year was under no threat today, but if I could get close to the hour mark I'd be pretty pleased. My main concern was to run steady, even kilometres and run a negative split. There are a couple of "better take these seriously" long hill climbs in the first half, so as long as I went out steadily and within myself, I figured the faster second half would be very feasible.
Starting near the back I was still a little perturbed to be overtaken by nearly everyone within the first kilometre. I stuck to my guns though and plodded on at what felt like a very comfortable pace. There were no kilometre markers regrettably, so it was hard to guage my speed, but I was confident I was striding along pretty well. I "lapped" my watch at a couple of landmarks and so was afterwards able to work out that I in fact did rather well in keeping my pace nice and steady.
By the first hill I started overtaking people, and from that point on I reeled in quite a few others, but hardly anyone passed me, so I figured I was running pretty much according to plan.
I had a brief but really strange
out of body experience half way up the second hill. I was suddenly looking down at myself running up this stupid hill and thinking "poor sod, glad that's not me", at which point of course reality was brought home rather cruelly. Felt pretty stupid really 'coz it wasn't
that much of a hill. Oh well, I was still overtaking people and feeling reasonably strong, so not sure what that was all about.
From about the half way point, where we ran through the city, around the waterfront and on toward the casino finish in the wealthy suburb of Sandy Bay, I felt really good. It was getting quite crowded though as we merged with the 7km race field (walkers, mainly), but it wasn't too bad, and police were doing a great job keeping angry motorists at bay.
As I did last year, I picked up the pace toward the end and finished comfortably and feeling strong. Time this year was 61:01 - a little over 4 minutes slower than last year, but I was still very pleased with the effort.
Later I was able to work out that I ran the first 7 km at a pretty even 5:45 pace and then cranked that up to 5:10 pace for the last 4 km - average pace for the whole 11km was 5:33, which I'm really happy with.
While the organisers did a great job with the traffic control, they failed miserably on the water stops. The first one was fine, but the second one had a queue(!) so I ignored that, but then found they'd completely run out of water at the finish. And there wasn't a solitary drop of Powerade to be seen anywhere, despite the sods being one of the major sponsors. All I saw was a forlorn and utterly empty Powerade tent, as if they just hadn't bothered to turn up.
There being no trophy for "best sticking to race plan" I skipped the presentations, collected my finishers' certificate and headed home feeling thirsty but well satisfied.
A good first week.
Day 7: 11km, 61:01
Week 1 Totals
Run: 24.5km
Bike: 60 mins
Weights: 30 mins
Walk: 2h 15m
Adelaide Marathon Campaign - Week 1 of 16
