Half-Marathon (Melbourne Marathon 2009)

In case of doubt - always do it; and although I did not have any serious doubt, I did it. Beating all of my personal competitors I have completed a half-marathon! This will stay with me for life.

If you want to know more about the pain and the gain, the experience of agony and of joy I endowed myself with by successfully completing this race, then read on.

I know they say that a bad workman always blames his tools, but for one reason or another, I seem to always have a good justification for slacking off with my training and preparations just before the next major sporting challenge. This time was no different: I returned from my Europe trip just 23 hours before the start of my first half-marathon race. Before I left to Europe my training was going quite well until I overstrained my knee just a few days before departure. For the last month before the race, however, i.e. while in Europe, things went quite differently. There were only two days where I did not drink, and that was only because I got so pissed the day before that I could not even look at alcohol for a while. Besides, I was smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day, was not having any regular sleeping schedule, and did not train whatsoever (except for a single very slow 7km run that only resulted in further increased knee pain). This all was rounded up by a 36 hours air journey with a stopover in Amsterdam, and a final loss of any sleeping pattern. And as I said, I got back home just 23 hours before the race start.

Some have said that it was stupid to run with no preparation and injured knees, but I did not feel that there was any going back. I ran and I did it! In 1 hour, 43 minutes and 20 seconds I was just over 3 minutes slower than my estimate before the my training regime broke down. And I beat all of my mates who also joined the run!

This experience taught me one thing about stopping training. In one month you do not loose muscles or speed. And if you are not too indulgent, you also do not gain too much weight. But what does happen is that you do loose your lengthened aerobic endurance that you have so hard trained for. I used to run 18km in training and I was tired, but fine. But in the 16th race kilometre I learned what they mean when they talk about "the wall".

Except for the first 3-5 minutes the hole race was a pain. During training I was usually warmed up after 10-12 minutes and the pain would go away, but back then I was running 3 times a week. But this time minutes passed and the pain would not go away. 15, 25, 25 minutes..., but things did not seem to get any better. I accepted it and attempted to disassociate by looking at the runners in front of me. I was surprised that despite the lack of appropriate preparation, the pain and the difficulty to keep a regular breathing pattern, I was doing quite well. I overtook the 1:40 pace-setter and was well in front of her, and according to my watch I was pleasantly close to a 4:30 pace. Close to the half way mark I ate some of my jelly babies in order to fill up on sugar a little. This was not a pleasant experience, as chewing the stuff was interfering with my breathing and it took almost a km until I got back into the pace. Another lesson: turns out that sugar snacks during the bike leg of a triathlon race are much easier to ingest than when running. The completed km signs on the way back from Albert Park to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the finish line was, were hardly visible. This was pissing me off quite a lot because not seeing those signs meant not seeing any countable progress in a context of ever increasing pain. Then I saw the 16km sign. And then it happened...

Normally, when I run, my speed is constrained by my cardiovascular system. To put it simply - if I go too fast, I run out of breath too quickly. But suddenly, my legs just stopped. It was like running through water or some other viscous substance. My speed plummeted. I could breath fine and I felt as if I could and I should run faster, but my legs just would not do that. Every step caused sensations that made all the pain that preceded the wall feel like a minor discomfort. And any attempt to overcome that pain was useless, not because I could not do it, but because the legs just would not move faster. People can't fly, however strong the will is, and I could not move any faster. Because of the bloody bad kilometre-signs I could not see when exactly it was that I was overtaken by the 1:40 pace-setter. I tried to keep up with her, but there was nothing I could do. My aim to complete my first half-marathon with an average pace of under 4:45 was inexorably getting farther and farther away. I realised that there was only one goal I could sensibly set for my self at that stage. Don't stop. Whatever happens, when you think you could switch to walking for a few minutes, - don't! If I stopped, I would have regretted it until my next long distance run, and given the condition of my knees it could be quite a while until then.

I expected, running the final few hundred metres inside the MCG would feel uplifting. It kinda was, but not to my leg muscles. My lungs and my heart had plenty of power for an end spurt, but what I got out of my legs was a bit disappointing. Just on the last 2 or 3 hundred metres, when I could physically see the finish line in front of me, and the stands of The G around and above myself, I managed to fool my muscles into a final sprint.

I almost fell after the finish. Some first-aid guy looked at me and asked whether I was all right. I was not. I thought I would die. But I told him to go away. I had just run 21.1km and I had not stopped. I needed some time to myself.

It was a very warm, beautiful spring day. I and some of my friends who also did the run chilled out on a piece of grassland outside The G near the university team's stands. The uni's support team provided a massage after the run, which was awesome. We went for a meal together and walked around the town for a while looking for both, to cool down the muscles and to find the restaurant. I slept in the afternoon and I got drunk with some more friends in the evening. Next morning, on Monday, I realised that I had now arrived back in Melbourne. Indeed, this was a worthy ending to a very interesting trip...

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