Karen writes: Marathon dissection
I am sitting on a sofa with my feet up, the sun is shining, there are alien (to a kiwi) bird noises outside and there is pizza from the supermarket heating up in the oven.
The Perth marathon over…all the hype and worrying and decision making is behind us. I think you get to a point where you aren’t having paroxysms of terror when you line up at a start line, more anxiety about what you have forgotten and a vague memory of discomfort your brain has suppressed from the last time.
Anyway, it started early in the morning, it was still dark and we walked through the city streets with occasional other ‘runner’ looking people popping out of doors and heading to the assembly area. It was a huge field, but it didn’t have a huge number of people on it (heard later that about 800 of the 42000 participants were marathon runners). The tall buildings had lights and impressive electronic billboards, and some bright spark had decreed that marathon runners needed to warm up with energetic things like star jumps…not us…we conserve our energy, just a few stretches. Then we had to walk up a sideroad to the startline, and we were off and running, it was neat running down the main road with no cars, the high rises above us.
There was a bit of winding around various city streets, it was fabulous as the sky lightened and then we got to run by the Swan river for quite a while with the sun coming up, the water was completely flat and dotted with fancy boats. Then we headed uphill for Kings park
Ok, since I wrote that last bit, had the pizza, stole half a glass of wine off Kate, and had been to bed for 2 hours, just been driven out though by hunger and the shivers, so eaten peanuts, cherries, rum and raisin chocolate with orange juice in the sun on the little deck.
Back to the marathon. There weren’t a lot of marathoners, but 2 hours in a cyclist came along calling out that the half marathoners were on their way, and they were. Like a herd of high speed something-or-others, they left mere mortals spinning in their wake. I literally ended up in a sea of them, parting to race round me, quite scary actually. From then on whatever position you ran on the road someone was passing on the left or the right at greater speed. Outside the city using the other side of the closed road the 12km walk/runners also appeared, then I got an idea of how really big the event actually was, there were thousands and thousands of people moving in a colourful stream towards the coast.
I felt like I was doing really well for most of the run, even had a little surge of speed at about 30km. I felt optimistic that I was on track to come in under 4 hours 30 but while my body felt great, my mind started protesting and the last 12 km became a hot, hard struggle. 2km out I walked up a hill and didn’t want to start running again, but I did and eventually got some sort of rhythm going and came into the finish line at around 4 hours 33... I think, I need to confirm that. It was sobering that we had to go around the medics working on some poor soul on the ground, there were quickfire orders being issued about ‘stat’ this, and that, but worse was to come after the finish line with someone having CPR performed on them, you head down the chute to the tents for food and drink reminded that it isn't a light undertaking.
So analysis, the choices of food went fine, the clothes were fine, used 4 gu gels (half every half hour) and a couple of powerbar chewy things at the end, back to the apartment asap for shower, food and compression pants. Feeling great!
Kate can tell her story, it’s a pretty cool one. She is asleep on the sofa right now with her feet in the sun, well earned rest!
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