Thanks for all the comments folks ... here's the blow-by-blow account of race day:
******************** Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats. - Amos Bronson Alcott
Twenty-four hours after the race and I'm feeling OK. No more leg-sore than after any hard run, and the acid test - descending a flight of stairs - is no problem. I trained well, prepared well, tapered well and felt great at the start of the race, and now I have my medal and a rather fetching finisher's T-shirt as small but much cherished rewards for the long years it has taken me to achieve this.
On the day, something went wrong, of that there is no doubt. But then that's not totally unexpected in your debut marathon, and the primary goal - to just finish the damn thing - was achieved. And given the setbacks I'd experienced getting this far, getting through the race at all was for me a big and long-sought success.
I started this campaign nearly nine years ago, when just short of my 42nd birthday I hatched a plan to run a 42km marathon sometime in my 42nd year. Well, that didn't happen, and along the way I suffered the full gamut of injuries, illnesses and circumstances that repeatedly threatened to make running impossible for me. The low points are worth briefly repeating here, because they actually helped me get through the race yesterday, even more so than my successes.
Perhaps the most serious was a stint of intensive care in the cardiac unit of my local hospital, which was to have ramifications still ongoing today, but that was perhaps totally beyond my control. I think the real low point of my running life came a few years later when training for the Canberra marathon. Training had been going reasonably well but I was well short of long runs and had reached a make-or-break point. It was a not-negotiable minimum 26 kilometres I had scheduled. About 5 kilometres short of that distance I simply collapsed from exhaustion. I awoke a half hour later where I'd fallen knowing my campaign was over. That crushing moment of intense disappointment is etched into my running psyche and has actually done much to improve my running in recent times as I strive to avoid ever experiencing that again.
But, to the race itself: the Sydney marathon's life began in 2001, the year after the Sydney Olympics, and was designed in part to commemorate that great event. The course however does not follow the entire Olympic marathon course, nor does it finish at the Olympic stadium. Instead it's designed to take in all of the city's great landmarks and is as spectacular as it is tight and twisty. A fast course it is not, and that's perhaps indicated by the numbers that run it. This year the race had a little short of 3,000 finishers. That's right, only 3,000. Just four weeks ago, this city had a world record 85,000 runners in the annual City to Surf 14km fun run, yet hardly anyone seems to turn up for what is a truly spectacular big city marathon.
Never mind, I wasn't there to worry about the numbers. The day began cool and calm, but threatened to get warm fairly soon. We were to kick off at 7:30 and I arrived about a half hour early, and spent the time getting warm in the sun and admiring the view - the starting area is in a park underneath the northern approaches to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the views of the bridge, the harbour and the city skyline are superb.
I couldn't help noticing then and during the race, large numbers of Japanese runners. Sydney is a very cosmopolitan place (as evidenced by there being 52 countries represented in this relatively small field of participants) but doesn't have a large Japanese population, so this was surprising. The reason for it I wouldn't discover until later...
As we neared gun time, I took position at the back of my starting pen, from where I could see on the other side of the harbour the half-marathon runners who had started an hour earlier, by now making their way around Dawes Point under the southern end of the bridge, and felt a pang of envy, knowing they were already half-way through their race. We were yet to start, and would be running well into the middle of the day. Perhaps I should have felt more nervous, but in fact I felt calm and confident, and as we set off I was pleased to see here at the back of my starting group were plenty of runners intent on heading out at a sensible pace. Fit, strong, confident looking runners were settling in to slow, 6:15 - 6:30/km pacing perfect for an endurance event and I had every reason to think this was going to go well.
We headed firstly north, away from the bridge for half a km or so, before turning around and joining the approaches to the bridge. This is the only race of the year permitted to run across the famous 'coathanger' and I took time to enjoy the experience. You can walk across the bridge any time you like on the pedestrian footpath, but it is virtually enclosed in suicide-proof mesh and barbed-wire and you really can't see anything. It's not unlike being in prison and hardly pleasant. Running across the broad expanse of road surface however is a fabulous experience. Unlike cars and buses the trains run as normal, and we had fun waving at the passengers as they took photos of us as they sped past.
Once over the bridge we did a short out-and-back then looped onto the Cahill expressway with fabulous views of Circular Quay, the bridge again of course and our eventual destination, the Sydney Opera House where the race ends. There was however a hell of a lot of ground to cover before we would step on to the Opera House forecourt and cross the finish line.
Once past Circular Quay we headed westwards toward Hyde Park, but then turned back and ran a 3.5 km loop around the Botanical Gardens. It was here that I began pulling away from the 4:30 pacing group which I had been following. One of the pacers was running her 100th marathon, was in a very jovial mood and seemed to know everyone, so there was much banter and cheering and it started to get on my nerves. I was feeling very comfortable and so slowly pulled ahead of them until they were out of earshot.
We then passed the Art Gallery and St. Mary's Cathedral before running through the centre of Hyde Park, hitting the 10km point in 65 minutes - perhaps a little fast, but to be honest I was travelling extremely comfortably. The only concern I had was that my heart rate was at least 20bpm too high for this pace in these conditions. With the benefit of hindsight I of course realise I should have paid more attention to what this meant. I didn't know what was causing it to be high, but high it was and I really should have taken heed of the message my HRM was giving me, but of course, I didn't.
For the moment however I felt great. I ate my first chia/pinole biscuit at this point and felt an immediate boost from it, but resisted the urge to pick up the pace. From here we left the half marathon course and headed westwards to run an additional half marathon through the area of the Sydney Cricket Ground and Centennial Park. Up Oxford Street - scene of the now famous annual Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras - past the Sydney Football Stadium and the SCG before turning around and running past them again, and then again..! On the approach road to Centennial Park we saw the race leaders coming past us, which meant they were already a good 12km ahead. The real surprise was the leader - he was both a very long way ahead of the second place runner and ... he wasn't a Kenyan! But more of that later...
Running through and around Centennial Park was pleasant, but tedious. There seemed to be no end to the thing, the only light relief being the "No Stopping" warnings painted on the road every thirty metres or so. The original Olympic marathon course also came through here, and the blue line is still visible in many parts of the park. I crossed the half-way point in 2h11m, still feeling good, and beginning to think sub 4:30 was possible, although I was fully cognisant of the fact that there was still another half marathon to go. There was also the not so small matter of my heart rate which had slowly crept up and was now clearly very much higher than it ought to have been. On top of that I'd eaten another chia/pinole biscuit at the 20km mark, and now unusually my stomach was starting to feel very queasy.
Eventually we left the park and began the worst part of the course - four kilometres of out-and-back along a busy road with no redeeming features. This was just hard graft but once done we were headed back toward the city. However this also where the wheels started to fall off for me. At 25km I'd started to slow and got steadily slower over the next three kilometres. By 28km I was really struggling, but thankfully we hit a downhill section and I felt a little better as we returned to Oxford Street with the city firmly in our sights. However I was still running very slowly - well over 7 min/km pace and struggling to maintain it. My stomach was now feeling quite sick, and despite needing fuel I couldn't abide the thought of anything more, so plodded on as best I could.
At 30km the inevitable happened. I heard it coming - the sound of a large group of runners and the high-spirited voice of our 100-marathon woman. It was the 4:30 pacing group, and they inexorably wound me in. 'Come on, just keep up with us!' shouted 100-marathon lady as the group swarmed around me, but I just didn't have the strength. As well as a queasy stomach, my calfs were now leaden and the pace group seemingly powered ahead and left me dead.
I staggered ever onward. We reached Hyde Park, which I negotiated OK, then hit the city centre where I really started to struggle. Then the big crunch - at around 32.5km we returned to Circular Quay, this time however down at street level rather than on the overhead expressway, and it was here that we crossed paths with the much faster runners all streaming in the opposite direction toward the finish line, just a kilometre away. I desperately wanted to be where they were, but I still had about another 9km loop through Darling Harbour and Pyrmont to do, all the while passing the seemingly endless stream of runners on their way to the finishing line. It felt wretched, and I slowed to my first walk break, despite the best efforts of the volunteers and marshalls to cheer me on. It was an awful, terrible feeling, but breaking into a run was short-lived as either my stomach or my calfs clenched in pain. I persevered for a couple of kilometres before deciding my only option was to walk through it until things settled down. That's when the cramps started, the worst being a spasm in my right knee that I'd not experienced before. A bit of stretching sorted that out and then I fell in with another runner, also reduced to a walk, and he was such a positive, cheerful kind of bloke that very soon I started to feel better. Even so, it was two kilometres of solid walking before I felt sufficiently revived to break back into a jog. Even that was stop and go for a bit, but by then the end was in sight.
More motivation came in the form of road crew who were removing the cones from the roadways and urging us to run on the footpath, despite us being well inside the cut-off time. This only spurred us on, determined to claim our road space before the traffic came through. And on the other side of the road, the final stragglers, still with several kilometres to run. Last of all was a very portly but determined-looking woman who didn't look in the least perturbed that right on her heels were two police vehicles with lights flashing, the sag wagon and a road works vehicle, all following at a sedate 7 kph or so. Boy did she ever deserve her applause!
About then I fell in behind two Belgian and two Japanese runners who got me back into some rhythm and then somewhat surprisingly I overtook them and began striding out the last kilometre and a half to the finish. Here the crowd support was sensational. Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be genuine warmth in their applause and cheering for what was essentially the tail-end of the pack attempting to break 5 hours. Complete strangers making eye contact to urge you on is incredibly motivating, and I only wish they could be have been there at the 30km mark!
Still, it was a fabulous way to finish a race, and the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House is a mighty place to end an event. Gun time was just short of 5:00, much to the delight of the cheering crowd and net time came out at 4:56:29 ... as EG said, five seconds better than his PB, so mate, you have some work to do now!
I accepted my medal from a delightful woman only to be chided by the bloke standing beside her who complained all the males went straight to her for their medals. I apologised and gave him a sweaty hug which did little to mollify him but made her chuckle. Other helpful volunteers loaded me down with bottles of water and glowing blue isotonic drink as well as a finisher's t-shirt but they had run out of free newspapers (the paper being a major sponsor), but as I had too few hands to carry all this stuff that was fine by me.
Eschewing the "recovery area" I headed back along Circular Quay toward the train station, as there was beer and chips waiting for me at home, which just at that moment seemed like manna from heaven. There were still some runners crossing the finish line of course, though their numbers were thinning out considerably now. I made my way to the train station, and even climbed the stairs rather than take the escalator, and then to home.
Once off the train, I climbed the steps of the station, still wearing my race bib and finisher's medal when a small boy of seven or eight years looked at me then asked his father, 'Daddy is it hard to run a marathon?' 'Oh yes,' replied the father, 'it takes lots and lots of practise.'
'And a certain amount of lunacy' I nearly added out loud. But I didn't. Who knows, maybe one day that small boy will also run a marathon, and in some small way at least, I'll be partly to blame.
But back to the winner and those Japanese runners. I'd never heard of Yuki Kawauchi, but he's a 2:08 marathoner and apparently has a rock-star-like cult following in Japan and elsewhere. So he came here and was followed by 500 fans(!), hence the high proportion of Japanese runners. As for Kawauchi himself, he went on to smash the course record by a truly impressive two and three-quarter minutes. For once, the Kenyans were left trailing in a non-African wake. Could this be a revival in Japanese distance running?
Come to think of it, does this signal a new chapter in MLCM distance running too? We shall see, dear viewers. For the moment I'm not promising anything, although a close relative has sternly told me off for running this race without fund-raising for charity, so I may yet be shamed into doing another one. If so, Canberra next April looks a likely target.
As ever, stay tuned.
MLCMM ... Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man!
42.2km, 4h56:29, bloody tough.
YTD: 1,111.7km
P.S. I should add that No.1 son, Chris, ran a 1:58 PB in the half-marathon despite no long runs for two months!
Ah, the benefits of youth. So in all, a positive day for the MLCM family.
Insectember
