Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Sun Run - Short but Sharp

Let's get this straight right at the beginning....

I don't do fast.

I am powered by a diesel engine and this ol' diesel is great at chugging away for the 15-odd hours needed for an ironman.  I am absolutely useless at going fast and will always be the tortoise rather than the hare.  This is why I don't do Olympic distance or sprint distance triathlons.  And this is why I moan like anything when Coach Dave suggests I do a little duathlon.  

So you can imagine Coach Dave's surprise when I emailed him before Christmas asking if he thought it would work training-wise for me to do a little fun run, a mere 6 weeks before ironman.

Well, I imagined his surprise.

Dave, true to form, didn't hesitate to email back hugely enthusiastic about the whole idea.  An opportunity to "sharpen up" in the final few weeks was apparently the best idea I had come up with .... ever.

Which got me worried!

So St Pete and I entered the Sun Run and started mentally preparing for a short, sharp, 6.45km "fun" run from Dee Why to Manly.  I decided I would push my pace and aim to finish in under 40 minutes, which would require an average pace of less than 6 minutes per kilometre.  I had been achieving that for most training runs and it was now time to put it together for an actual race.

No pressure....

What I hadn't figured on was the elevation of the course.  Simple, deluded me somehow figured that going from one beach down the coast to the next one would be essentially flat.  We have been living in Sydney for almost six months now and I still haven't learnt my lesson.  Idiot.  But more on that later.

A 4.00am wake up call on the morning of the race saw us up and out the door, and a short walk up to North Sydney where we picked up the 5.09am bus out to Dee Why.  Within a couple of stops it was standing room only on the bus with fellow runners and party goers heading home from their all night adventures.  Just after 6.00am we piled out at Dee Why and had a short walk down the road to the beach area where a party atmosphere was well underway for the start of the run.

Over 5000 runners had entered and we were split into 3 starting groups - the runners, the joggers and the walkers/recreational entrants, depending on the estimated finish time you put on the entry form.  My  incredible optimism of a sub 40min finish had us seeded into the runners (fastest!) group - yikes, no pressure!!!!!  So we positioned ourselves at the back of the runners' start area and waited for the gun.

It was a great atmosphere, and perfect weather conditions.  It had rained overnight so was a little cooler than usual, but no wind and set to warm up and be a stunning day.

I was feeling mentally prepared for a strong run but had overheard some people talking about "using the downhills for recovery" which started ringing alarm bells in my head.  Never mind, whatever comes I'll deal with it.  Finally the gun went off and we were away.  And within 200m of the start we were climbing our first hill.

Geez, what a way to warm up...



It would be fair to say the course was undulating for the first 5km, finishing with a 1500m flat section at Manly.  We had a couple of decent hills at the start, which I coped with fine and then the rest of the run went in a bit of a blur until a couple of short, sharp hills at around the 4km mark which I ended up walking.

At the end of the final climb we were in Queenscliff and it was a real highlight to come across Balmoral Tri Club member Bel and her workmates from Lululemon cheering everyone on from the sidelines, dressed in pink tutus.  They looked amazing and I managed to give Bel a high five as I went past - so good to have a laugh at a time when I was mentally starting to really struggle.

We headed down the final hill (use the downhill to recover.....) and dropped into the start of Manly beach and the final 1500m to the finish.  It was getting really tough by this stage - I was trying to keep the pace on but my head was also saying "just slow down, this is too hard".  I could see the finish arch in the distance and it seemed too far away to keep the pace up for.

I shut out the give up voice, however, and kept going, visualising as I did so the finish line for Ironman and drawing on all my mental strength to stay strong and finish strong.  About 200m from the finish we could hear the announcer calling people in for the sub 40 minute finish.  He was urging people on, to get them in before the clock ticked over for 40 minutes and all I could think was "that's the gun time, not net time" and "I can't go any faster".

Somehow, however, I did cross the finish line and, get this, it was just before 40 minutes ticked over on the clock.  I ended up with a net time of 38min 29sec - 91 seconds to spare!

It was only a 40 minute run and only 6.45km but I was really happy to have been able to push it to the max and achieve my goal.

Overall, then, it still wasn't a hugely fast time, but it was a good pace for me, especially with the hills and the unscheduled walk up the last ones.  What I was especially pleased with, though, was winning the mental battle against myself and not letting up when the going got tough.  I'm going to need all that mental strength and more out on the run at Ironman if I'm going to have a shot at a PB.

Bring it on!!!

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