City to Surf and Perth Half Marathon
Ran my first half marathon today, and it seemed kind of a non-event in the way things do when you've done enough preparation that there's no longer any question that you can do them. Run a half marathon? Sure, I can do that. ::shrug:: Still, I guess there is some sense of achievement from not having much sense of achievement about running more than 20 kilometres. The process by which something that once seemed almost impossible comes to seem routine is interesting. A month ago 15km seemed like a big deal, today 21.1km didn't. I don't have any immediate plans to run a full marathon, but I can see now how it would be done. Just more of the same!
When I decided back in June that I might as well train for a half marathon this year, if I was ever going to do it, it was largely because I was so sad and disappointed in myself that the marginal discomfort of running for two hours didn't seem particularly daunting. When I didn't feel much like running, I'd ask myself whether I'd feel any better doing anything else, and since the answer was always no, well, might as well get out and run. There is definitely a place for negative inspiration.
City to Surf the weekend before in my best time so far - 64 minutes for a hilly 12km course. That's still very slow for a serious runner, but perfectly respectable for a pain-averse, two-or-three-times-a-week casual runner like me, especially when I worked (the heavy, bending over kind of work, not the sitting at the computer kind of work) both the day before and the afternoon of the race. (I've inadvertently conditioned my clients to think this is normal and no less than they'd expect of me!)
The City to Surf is Australia's second-largest community event, with 26,000 participants (second only to Sydney's event - they have 60,000 entrants, but three times our population). It's really more a charity event than a race, but it uses fancy timing technology so you can get an accurate time and if you start near enough to the front that you're not blocked by even slower people for the first couple of kilometres, you can get a pretty clear run. The best part is the start - in fact it's walking to the start from where you were dropped off several city blocks away, and seeing people feeding in from every direction, wearing very little on a winter's morning and moving with the kind of bouncy, athletic stride you don't normally see in the CBD. Then there's the cameraderie of the queues for the portable toilets. After the gun finally goes off, there's a long wait for movement to work its way down to where you are, then you can take a few steps, then finally start to jog. The music from Chariots of Fire is playing from the loudspeakers and you're over the start line, hoping the little transponder on your shoe is working. Where it was kind of noisy before the start line, it's mostly silent afterwards - it's straight into the first hill and twelve kilometres to the beach. There are a few laughs at the bucks-night guy in a dress and tied to a post, but mostly there's just the muted sound of running shoes on pavement and the occasional "Sorry" or "Excuse me" as people work themselves into position. I'm soaking up the sensation of being in a moving herd and wondering: is this what it would feel like to be a buffalo? Well, probably not. But it's kind of neat all the same.
Next is the suburb with the fancy townhouses where people are holding breakfast parties on their balconies and cheering the runners on, followed by the long section where Utterly-Pain-Averse Zebra starts to engage You've-Done-The-Training-And-You-Know-You'll-Be-Disappointed-If-You-Do-As-Badly-As-Last-Year Zebra in an ongoing dialogue. Somebody makes a discouraged sound on a hill, and someone else calls out, "Just keep swimming, mate! ...Oh wait. Wrong race." Then it's through Perry Lakes, where the 4km entrants are gathered awaiting their start, and onto Oceanic Drive for the final hills and then down to the finish. Near the top of what I'm sure is the second-last hill, a woman calls out, "Keep going! It's all downhill from here" and I think, "How mean. You shouldn't say things like that" - but she was right, I'd lost count and there was the ocean!
The Perth Half Marathon is a different sort of event entirely, a runner's race with about 400 entrants where my pace puts me well towards the back of the field. Since I was going slower, Utterly-Pain-Averse Zebra didn't have much to complain about except for a stretch between 15km and 18km where I? she? all Zebras present? got a bit of a stitch and we all cheerfully agreed to slow down even more and give up our best-case scenario of a sub-two-hour finish. Two hours and four minutes is good enough for me. If anybody had told me ten years ago that today I could run for more than two hours, I'd've been very skeptical!
For most of the way I ran near Darryl, the man with cerebral palsy I've mentioned before. That is to say, in the presence of greatness. Like last time, I figured I'd probably overtake him at some point, and like last time, he beat me comfortably. It's hard to imagine anyone much less cut out to run. His legs deviate sharply outwards from his knees and he has to slam his feet down with every stride, which must cause terrible impact. One arm's very twisted and it makes his upper body lurch. On uneven ground, he just accepts that he'll fall over from time to time. His parents were told he'd never walk and used to tie him to their clothesline so he could learn to stand upright. Today he's the world champion for his level of disability for all distances over 10,000m. It's amazing and humbling. I found him at the end and told him what an honour it was to be beaten by him.
When I decided back in June that I might as well train for a half marathon this year, if I was ever going to do it, it was largely because I was so sad and disappointed in myself that the marginal discomfort of running for two hours didn't seem particularly daunting. When I didn't feel much like running, I'd ask myself whether I'd feel any better doing anything else, and since the answer was always no, well, might as well get out and run. There is definitely a place for negative inspiration.
City to Surf the weekend before in my best time so far - 64 minutes for a hilly 12km course. That's still very slow for a serious runner, but perfectly respectable for a pain-averse, two-or-three-times-a-week casual runner like me, especially when I worked (the heavy, bending over kind of work, not the sitting at the computer kind of work) both the day before and the afternoon of the race. (I've inadvertently conditioned my clients to think this is normal and no less than they'd expect of me!)
The City to Surf is Australia's second-largest community event, with 26,000 participants (second only to Sydney's event - they have 60,000 entrants, but three times our population). It's really more a charity event than a race, but it uses fancy timing technology so you can get an accurate time and if you start near enough to the front that you're not blocked by even slower people for the first couple of kilometres, you can get a pretty clear run. The best part is the start - in fact it's walking to the start from where you were dropped off several city blocks away, and seeing people feeding in from every direction, wearing very little on a winter's morning and moving with the kind of bouncy, athletic stride you don't normally see in the CBD. Then there's the cameraderie of the queues for the portable toilets. After the gun finally goes off, there's a long wait for movement to work its way down to where you are, then you can take a few steps, then finally start to jog. The music from Chariots of Fire is playing from the loudspeakers and you're over the start line, hoping the little transponder on your shoe is working. Where it was kind of noisy before the start line, it's mostly silent afterwards - it's straight into the first hill and twelve kilometres to the beach. There are a few laughs at the bucks-night guy in a dress and tied to a post, but mostly there's just the muted sound of running shoes on pavement and the occasional "Sorry" or "Excuse me" as people work themselves into position. I'm soaking up the sensation of being in a moving herd and wondering: is this what it would feel like to be a buffalo? Well, probably not. But it's kind of neat all the same.
Next is the suburb with the fancy townhouses where people are holding breakfast parties on their balconies and cheering the runners on, followed by the long section where Utterly-Pain-Averse Zebra starts to engage You've-Done-The-Training-And-You-Know-You'll-Be-Disappointed-If-You-Do-As-Badly-As-Last-Year Zebra in an ongoing dialogue. Somebody makes a discouraged sound on a hill, and someone else calls out, "Just keep swimming, mate! ...Oh wait. Wrong race." Then it's through Perry Lakes, where the 4km entrants are gathered awaiting their start, and onto Oceanic Drive for the final hills and then down to the finish. Near the top of what I'm sure is the second-last hill, a woman calls out, "Keep going! It's all downhill from here" and I think, "How mean. You shouldn't say things like that" - but she was right, I'd lost count and there was the ocean!
The Perth Half Marathon is a different sort of event entirely, a runner's race with about 400 entrants where my pace puts me well towards the back of the field. Since I was going slower, Utterly-Pain-Averse Zebra didn't have much to complain about except for a stretch between 15km and 18km where I? she? all Zebras present? got a bit of a stitch and we all cheerfully agreed to slow down even more and give up our best-case scenario of a sub-two-hour finish. Two hours and four minutes is good enough for me. If anybody had told me ten years ago that today I could run for more than two hours, I'd've been very skeptical!
For most of the way I ran near Darryl, the man with cerebral palsy I've mentioned before. That is to say, in the presence of greatness. Like last time, I figured I'd probably overtake him at some point, and like last time, he beat me comfortably. It's hard to imagine anyone much less cut out to run. His legs deviate sharply outwards from his knees and he has to slam his feet down with every stride, which must cause terrible impact. One arm's very twisted and it makes his upper body lurch. On uneven ground, he just accepts that he'll fall over from time to time. His parents were told he'd never walk and used to tie him to their clothesline so he could learn to stand upright. Today he's the world champion for his level of disability for all distances over 10,000m. It's amazing and humbling. I found him at the end and told him what an honour it was to be beaten by him.