May As Well

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

2016 Sydney Half Marathon Race Report

The days are so much shorter now and winter can't be far away. Technically, it's but two short weeks to the official start of the winter season, and by now we ought to be seeing scarves and beanies in the streets and would normally have dusted off the heaters and ordered a ton or two of firewood. And yet summer refuses to leave. Sunny days with temperatures in the mid 20s persist, and even the ocean temperature remains warm enough that the beaches remain packed, while the 'icebergs', those weird winter swimmers who swim every day, all year round, consider moving further south to escape the crowds.

In short, the weather is unseasonably warm.

For this race then, the late surge of summer warmth is good news. This was my fourth running of the event, and normally I associate it with a frigid start to the day. Like most  Aussie races, this one starts at an unreasonable hour, in this instance 6:45 a.m. and in past years I have resorted to sheltering in the relative warmth of a nearby office block, or fighting the crowds to stand in the warm air from the underground train station air vents near to the race start. There was none of that today. I was up at 5:15 a.m. to snaffle a piece of toast and a banana before catching the 5:44 into the city, and it was sufficiently warm that I happily wandered across the road to the train station in only my running kit of shorts and T-shirt, race number already attached, and with nothing but my train ticket card in my pocket.

The train journey was uneventful, with half the passengers being runners, the other half being slightly bemused commuters who, as in every other time I've made this journey, clearly wondering if they've somehow caught the same train as a party of lunatic asylum day trippers. A family of seven sat near me, all of them apparently running today, and their conversation consisted of the usual pot pourri of race strategies, discussion about the course and where they would all meet up again after the event.

On alighting at Town Hall station we emerged into the early gloom of dawn and into the midst of yet another group of bemused all night revellers wondering what on earth was happening as a small army of lycra-clad athletes over-ran the early morning city streets. One of them, emerging surprisingly sober and alone from an all-night venue asked me which bar we were all going to. 'Whatever is still open' I lamely replied, caught out by the unexpected question and pondering just how preferable that option sounded to the other actual one of pounding out 21.1 kilometres of pain and suffering around the streets of Sydney.

I arrived at the Hyde Park starting area in plenty of time to find a sea of people struggling to find where they needed to be. The queues for the toilets were astonishing (don't these people go before they leave home?); the army of volunteer guides and marshals good-natured and doing a wonderful job and the atmosphere buoyant and cheerful. It made me happy to be here once again, despite the early hour, but also very glad I wasn't in any desperate need for toilet facilities. The people at the wrong end of the queue seemingly had the double anxiety of not being able to hold on, and also missing the start of the race.

With no bag to 'drop', no need for the 'facilities' and little to no chance of finding the other people that I knew to also be racing among the crowd, I headed for the starting area. I was self-seeded into the 1h45m to 2h00m red group. A little worryingly, I found myself to be very close to the start of the whole group. Yes, there were the elite runners and 'blue group' of sub-1h45m runners ahead of me, but in comparison to those behind me, they were very few. Alarm bells were ringing just ever so slightly, but it was at least interesting for once to actually be able to see the celebrities at the start line doing their usual revving of the crowd. Master of ceremonies was Pat Carroll, holder of the half marathon record on Australian soil of 61m11s, recorded in 1994 at this very event, which is quite surprising, because it is a nasty twisting, tight and hilly course not generally noted for fast times. Even the elite Kenyans have failed to seriously challenge his record here, so it's quite something for it to have remained intact for so long.

These days however, he is relegated to cheesy MC duties. 'I want to see everyone's hands in the air!'  he yells in a desperate attempt to engage our enthusiasm. He introduces the warm up 'artist', someone from London with such a broad cockney accent that no-one can understand his instructions. Much flailing of arms and dodgy dance moves descends merely into a fit of ungainly hysterics , but no-one much seems to mind.

Pretty soon we're off, by which time I'm genuinely alarmed to discover I'm probably in the first tenth of the field. This is never for me a good place to be, as the constant sea of faster runners passing me does little for my rhythm or my confidence, but there is little to be done about it now except to keep moving forward and seeing if I can find a decent pace and rhythm.

My race tactics are a little unusual, in that I have none. Being the consummate keeper of a detailed running log with its myriad, mathematical analyses of all my runs, I always have a plan, usually worked out to the tiniest of detail. This time however, life, as they say, has rather got in the way of things, and whilst I am confident of finishing this race, I have little to no idea of what I can realistically expect in terms of times, pacing and so on. I have therefore gone into this race in the unfamiliar position of 'just seeing what happens'. 

This almost immediately proves itself to be a very bad plan, with the first kilometre being very much faster than it ought. This is doubly disturbing when you consider much of that first few minutes is really about just keeping your feet and fighting your way through the crowd still trying to get itself organised. That the second kilometre is then faster again is all the more disturbing.

However, as is typically the case in these type of events, I am travelling quite well and feeling comfortable with the pace so just hang on to see 'what might happen'. Again, not a particularly sound race tactic, but in lieu of anything else, it seemed reasonable at the time.

I had by this stage been well and truly passed by the 120 minute pacer man, who zoomed past me at what seemed an insane pace, and certainly well ahead of two hour timing. It soon transpired that he was only one of two, two-hour pacers, the second one drawing alongside soon after, wondering aloud what the other thought he was doing. 'He seems to be on some kind of 2 hour PB pace' he said, his own pace whilst still a little fast, far more reasonable. I decided to tack along for a while, and enjoyed handing responsibility for some sensible pacing to someone else. He said he was actually working on 1h58m pace to 'give people a little leeway'. At the first water station however I lost him and I ran on ahead, still way ahead of what I thought was a sensible pace, but feeling good enough to not seriously question what I was doing.

The truth of the matter was that deep down I knew this pace was a killer. True, I had run well at the Canberra half marathon just a few weeks before, and while I had kept up a reasonable training program since then, it was not one geared toward a half marathon PB, at which pace I was now travelling. Even so, despite the alarm bells going off in my head, and my watch telling me I was running far faster than I had for a very long time, I kept  on going.

To run a half marathon in two hours, you need to maintain a pace of 5:41 per kilometre, and I was way ahead of that by perhaps 15 seconds or so per kilometre, despite my training in recent weeks having nothing like that goal in mind. Any sane, sensible person would just simply slow down and not risk blowing up in the latter stages of the race. It's not like I had anything to prove. This was just another training run, seeing how i went in order to properly set my other goals for the rest of the year. But do I listen to myself? No, apparently not. On I went, smashing it kilometre after kilometre. The two hour pacers were well behind me, and I was stupid enough to start looking for the 1h55m pacer. Oh my!

I passed the half way point in 58 minutes. Whilst I knew through the heaviness of my legs that a PB was not possible, I was still naive enough to consider sub-2 hours a definite chance. Indeed, the 13th kilometre was my fastest at 5:13; well and truly inside PB pace. By my standards I was flying!

But of course inevitably this was also my downfall. The wall was hit, and the next two kilometres saw me reduced to near training pace, the next one even a little below. With gut-wrenching inevitability, the two-hour pacers then caught me and passed by. I at least lifted a little and managed to claw my way back to a decent pace for the 17th kilometre, but that was my last gasp. The last four kilometres were a sea of pain and heartache. Water stations became excuses for walk breaks, and the hills saw my running speed reduced to below that of many of the people now walking. It was ugly. I felt bad, looked bad and was running as slowly as I ever had in any race anywhere.

All races come to an end however, and of course I hung on and finished the damned thing. My time was 2h06m, pretty poor considering my 58m first half, but at the end of the day it was still a race run and finished, which is always the primary goal. It was my own fault. Had I started in an appropriate point in the field further back, and paced myself more carefully I am sure the two hour mark could well have been broken. At the end of the day it doesn't matter at all. The whole point of running is to maintain a decent semblance of health and fitness to prolong life so that I can drink more booze.

Did I really say that?

Oh. I guess the truth just kind of popped out there.

Well, to be a little less flippant, it is all about prolonging life and making the most of it. Too many people don't have that privilege, and the fact that I hit the wall in a race matters not at all. That I was there is what matters. I had a go.

Life's good. Go run a race!