Auckland Marathon!

Since I've spent this year preparing for the marathon it's time I told you how it went.

The day started when my alarm went off at 4am. Actually, it was a bit of a relief because I didn't exactly sleep well. The first problem I came across was being unable to complete my breakfast. I had planned to have 4 spicy fruit muffins with honey - and that was what I trained with - but I could only get about 1 1/2 down. I thought I'd vomit if I had any more. I quickly put together another lot of my carb drink so I could get some more carbs down later.

It took a bit longer than I'd planned to get organised so at about 5am Mum and I drove off. The whole way in to town I was busy trying to control the butterflys in my stomach. We did get in on time and lined up in the huge line to get on the ferries. Fortunately, the ferries were well organised, the line moved quickly, and very soon we were on our way across the harbour.

Fortunately, we got there in good time so I took off my warm up gear and lined up for the start. There were very many people there: 6410 for the half marathon and 1061 for the full distance. The start area was chaos and I couldn't even see the start from where I was waiting. Fortunately we started fairly quickly at 6:30 so I wasn't left waiting nervously.

The large amounts of half marathon runners made the first half quite difficult. I found that I wanted to run faster than most of them (first mistake) and spent a lot of time and energy dodging around people (second mistake). The first half was fairly hilly as we worked our way through the North Shore. I had bottles of Leppin Enduro Booster that I'd given the organisers to place at the drink stations. Unfortunately, at the first station at about 5km I couldn't find it (third mistake). There was a vicious climb up Northcote Rd before we turned off to go the bridge. It was somewhat amusing and chastening to see the buses lined up for the people who wouldn't manage to get to the bridge before 8:30. All in all the run to the bridge was a fairly technically challenging run: dodging runners, picking the best line, and changing strides to go up and down hills.

Crossing the bridge was fantastic! The bridge is normally closed to pedestrians so you take your chances when you can. The climb is not as daunting as you might think and the view at the top is amazing. After that it was a fairly flat grind through the Westhaven marina until the half marathoners turned off to finish at Victoria Park.

I finished the first half in about 1:57 which was 3 minutes ahead of where I wanted to be. At this point I was reasonably heartened about my pacing even though I'd done the first couple of kilometres far too fast. My heart rate was about 175-180bpm through the first half (fourth mistake...).

The second half was a whole different kettle of fish. At this point I could actually see who the other marathoners were so it was easier to pace - but that didn't help much. The second half of the course was almost flat out along the waterfront to a turn around at St Heliers Bay. At this point the wind kicked in: while there were lots of complaints in the media about it I didn't find it too bad. I would class it as a mild to moderate on shore wind but because the course was across the wind it didn't really affect me much.

However, I slowed right down - a whole lot more than I expected or wanted. I'm still not quite sure why. I didn't hit the wall because I was managing a heart rate of about 145-160bpm and I know from bitter experience that when I hit the wall my heart rate will not go above 136bpm. At the first drink station in the second half I managed to get two bottles of my drink down to top up the carbs but that didn't help much. It took a fair bit of determination to get out to the turnaround point and I was very glad when I finally got around it.

But things got harder still. That 5km after the turnaround (about 32km - 37km) was just revolting. At one point I walked about 20 metres just for a rest. I had to make a couple of pit stops and then found I couldn't get my carb drink down. My body told me, quite clearly, that it didn't want any more of it and all I could do at the drink stations was a couple of sips of the drink with a bit of extra water.

At about 37km I passed a young woman walking up the road bridge and then heard a questioning "Eddie?" behind me. Turns out that is my school friend Jacqui, who, as it turned out was also doing her first marathon and suffering about as much as I was. We ran together for about the next 3km while I tried to encourage her along. This actually helped me get going a whole lot better too. After a while she decided she wanted to walk again so I gutsed it out to the finish.

I kept aiming for the ferry building and it's nice big clock tell myself that I could get there and then it would be only about a kilometre to get to the finish. Getting off the waterfront and turning into the Viaduct was just fabulous. There were quite a few people lined up watching and, more importantly, cheering us along. Mum was there and gave me a cheer - she even tried running beside me but the bags she was carrying rather slowed her down. I finally got out of the viaduct and could see the finish. There were a massive amount of people waiting there and cheering. A final turn into the finish chute and I could see the marathon time ticking up towards 4:30 so I put as much as I could into it and got across the line.
Those cheers at the end and the feeling of getting across that line was amazing. Quite a high!

Final stats: 4:29:53 since the gun went off, 4:26:37 since crossing the start line.

Result: one very tired Ed - a little bit frustrated about not getting under 4 hours.

Running, volleyball and more running.

Time for another update.

Two weeks ago I went up to Palmerston North for the National Road Rely Champs. I originally wsn't going to go up but the nice people at Scottish talked me into it. Turned out to be really good.

A road relay is about the only time a runner really gets to be part of a team. Given how upbeat most runners are it makes for quite an experience. The relay itself started at Manfeild Park in Feilding and, for seniors, had 7 legs of about 10km each. The course stretched up around the rural roads up to and round Halcombe.

I was in Scottish Mens D. To give you and idea of the pecking order we had a Scottish Mens A, B, C, a P, and then D. The P team were in our division and the P stands for a 4 letter word to do with drinking...

We started out pretty well. Our illustrious leader, Adrian, got us off for a very good start and we continued that quite well. There was quite some inter-team competition. The Mens P team were fighting it out with the Womens A team with quite some honour on the line. We were fighting it out amongst the Scottish Womens B team and the Mens 50+. For my leg I was up against a friend, Jasmine Brown. I knew she was faster than me across 5km but I had the lead at the start.

Everytime I glanced behind I could see two yellow singlets behind me (yellow being Scottish colours) which I thought included Jasmine. Eventually those two singlets caught up and turned out to be a Bays girl and one of the Scottish Mens 50+. Not Jasmine. As it happened, Jas caught up a huge amount but not quite enough to get past me.

The run by the next runner caught us up some more time but from that point we went downhill. The runner on leg 6 injured his hamstring and had to walk much of it. Our last run used to be an extremely good runner but had been off with injury. He'd done a 10km in 65min so he did very well to do his leg in 55min.

In the end, well, we were dead last. Someone has to be...

Scottish did quite well. Our women's veteran team won, we got second in all the mens divisions and the other teams did well too. We ended up being the first equal team. Full results here.

After that we all relaxed. Being kiwis that meant drinking and eating. Good crowd to hang out with.

The next day I went for a 32km run in Palmie. The final very long run in my schedule and I got to go around much of Palmie. It's quite a nice town, leafy suburbs, riverside trails, and the course I laid out worked quite well - except for a long boring jaunt across the north of the town on Tremaine Rd.

Then I hung out with my lovely sister Cat and her flatmates for a little while before driving back.

Last week, we had the business games volleyball tournament. For whatever reason we were seeded in a pool of death. Any one of 5 teams in our pool could have one the other pools, and therefore moved into the semis, but we all ended up in one pool. Our team even had the winner from 2004 up as our very first opposition.

It was a tough tournament. We lost the first game against Statistics New Zealand and thought we were out. Strangely enough it ended up that Wellington City Council beat them, by one point, and that we beat WCC reasonably well. Coming into the last game there were 3 teams, including us, who were in first equal position. It was rather amusing, Stats completely whipped their opposition by something like 43-20 (because the points difference might matter) but we lost to Te Puni Kokiri by 3 points. Because WCC beat Stats they got to go through.

It was all a bit unfair really. WCC ended up winning the tournament but Stats deserved a second chance. Because the organisers didn't seed the pool properly and because the progression system had no second chances the result was rather warped.

In other news, my PB for the 5km is finally coming down after all this training. Took about 37 seconds out of it to get to 21:35 in the Scottish series. Very happy!