Newsflash

So I thought hard about the idea of running the Canberra Times 10km in costume again. I thought hard, weighed the pros and cons, and after a while I decided against it.

Then I was shopping at lunchtime today, and noticed that one of the cheap shops in Woden had a bunch of Halloween costumes out already.

Presented for your approval, here is my Canberra Times Fun Run outfit!

French maid? Oui, d’accord. Excuse the lack of a head, but I’m a little under the weather this afternoon and I certainly look like it. There’s a little headband with a black bow and some pink lace up top. It’s very frou-frou.

Bad photo in general, but the rest were all worse.

I might need to perform some alterations to the skirt as it’s rather long. I’ve pinned it up in the shot here, but I might chuck a few stitches in so it sits better. Also, a bit of ironing might be required. But it’s serviceable.

Dunno. Still not sure. What do y’all reckon? There will be a feather duster involved.

Shoe Musing

I went to take a look at some new shoes the other day. My current shoes still do the trick, but I don’t know how much longer it’ll be before I start getting injuries. They’ve done several marathons, several City2Surf and a couple of half-marathons. Maybe it’s time to change things up a bit.

I’m running in a pair of Nike Lunarglide+ 2 at the moment, so I wanted to try a pair of Lunarglide+ 4. I also wanted to try a pair of the Nike Free Run+ 3, as I’ve been toying with the idea of transitioning towards a more barefoot style.

I got to the Athlete’s Foot store, and took a look at what they had on the shelves. On first impression, I wasn’t particularly impressed with either of the prospects. This may seem hideously superficial, but I don’t want to run in ugly shoes. The Lunarglides were white with a greeny-yellow trim. Bleh. White shoes, no thanks. The Free Run were a little better, low profile and rather speedy-looking, but the colour was a pinky-purply sort of washed out nothing. With these little dark silvery-grey designs. I wasn’t wowed.

I waited about fifteen or twenty minutes before the guy came over to help me, but he wasn’t really a lot of help. He managed to find a different colour in the Lunarglides, black and hot pink, but they were the wrong size. He found some bright orange Lunarglides from the last generation, but they were orange. So, no.

Between walking into the store and finally getting some service, I’d already decided I wasn’t too excited about the Free Run shoes. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to run in them all the time, and that I’d only be able to do short distances at first. He said I looked like a pretty serious runner, so I’d have a pretty good chance at being able to adapt to the reduced-cushioning style.

I wasn’t sure if he thought I was a serious runner because I was asking the right sort of questions, because he says that to everyone who comes in, or because of my marathon-distance tattoo on my ankle. Possibly a combination of the first and the last.

I’m still thinking about new shoes. If I can find a pair of the black and pink ones in a size that actually fits, I’ll probably go for it.

In other news, had a nice 10km jog on Saturday, and a passable 5km this afternoon after work. I was feeling a bit sick when I left work, and I’m feeling even worse now, but I sort of forgot about that for a little while when I was going around the lake.

Whee

A brief post-race (post-post-post-race, it seems) entry here. I thought it had posted sooner but apparently I’ve screwed up a setting with my blogging program thingie.

So, City2Surf was on the 12th, and boy was it an interesting race.

I tried to be good the night before, but failed miserably as usual. Living large at the Sheraton on the Park always gets to me. They upgraded me to a park view room this year. Pretty swank. Those darned ninja waiters at the Sheraton Club Lounge struck again. They keep refilling my glass with champagne. Of course, I’m not going to exercise any self control, and of course I’m going to drink every drop they give me. Silly girl. We were going to go out to dinner but I was tired after so much bubbly and we ate so many nibbly snacks with our drinks, so I wasn’t really in the mood to go anywhere special or eat anything much in particular.

Later, I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t eaten anything in the way of protein (well, apart from cheese) all evening, and the carbohydrates weren’t particularly good ones. So I compounded this error with a quick trip to McDonalds, a bunch of nuggets and some chips. That was a terrible idea, quite epically terrible in fact, as I was violently ill not half an hour later. I guess I just can’t metabolise that kind of food as well as I used to.

After all that malarkey, I got up the next day with little fuss or drama. The early morning wasn’t very promising. Misty, windy, a little rainy. I kept away from the little sausages at the breakfast buffet after grim memories of last year’s race. I did however eat a pile of bacon, and lived to regret it later on. In the long run, though, can bacon ever be truly regrettable? It’s okay, bacon. I forgive you.

I think I hit a winner with my pre-race pills. An antihistamine to cut down the snifflies, a couple of ibuprofen, and an imodium (not that I needed it, but nothing kills a race like a half-time queue for the portaloo). Now, the ibuprofen has been debated by many. Some say that taking a painkiller before a race is a dangerous thing, as you won’t be heeding your body’s signals when it’s trying to tell you something is wrong. I just like it, as it helps with the hangover. Yep, I’m a real running pro, me.

When I went back down to the room to prepare, disaster struck. My garmin was unfortunately as dead as a dodo. Look, I’m not so attached to my tech that I thought I couldn’t run the race without it, but it was definitely dissapointing. I like to keep track of my pace, and I like being able to plug it in later and get a full picture of how I was running. My splits, heart rate, the elevation... It’s very useful and very cool. Without the garmin, I didn’t feel as if I could pace myself as effectively. I pulled out my iphone and looked for an alternative, and decided I’d wing it with the help of Runkeeper (which I’d installed at some point and I don’t think I’d ever actually used).

There was a little sprinkling of rain as we headed out to the start, but nothing too depressing. It wasn’t even really that cold. As we didn’t get out there too early, there wasn’t a great deal of fanfare. The race was away before I even knew it.

This year there seemed to be a bunch more bands along the way. Tons of entertainment. Smurfs giving out bottles of water and smearing everyone who came within an arm’s length with blue paint. The blue-spattered bottles littered the gutters for a hundred metres afterward.

Paper cups at the drink stands, so we were all spared the ear-shattering racket of people trampling over a sea of sharp plastic shards at every station. I didn’t partake of the gatorade this year. As it didn’t rain at all, not really, I was probably more soaked than most when I got to the finish as most of the cups I grabbed ended up being overturned on top of my head. I was overheating, and I wanted to distract myself. I was also rather ill most of the way, and got fairly close to puking.

After the finish, I realised the reason for this. I was going way, way faster than I expected to run. My final time was 1:20:55, a full four minutes faster than my previous best. Woohoo! It’s a shame I didn’t crack 80 minutes, but there’s always next year. I’m sure I can do it.

When the race was done, me and mum got straight on a train, then straight on a ferry, then we went to the zoo. Taronga zoo kicks ass.

My legs didn’t hurt until the day after. Then they hurt even more the day after that.

I think I’m in a lot better shape than I thought I was. Canberra times 10k is on in three weeks or so. Looking forward to seeing how well I can do this year.

Packing and the pre-race jitters

One of these days, I would like to train properly for a race. At least three if not four days a week. Fartlek, speed sessions, tempo runs, hills... I’ll eat properly, hydrate properly, keep myself in top physical condition. I’m hoping to hit the Cadbury Marathon in January, so I guess the training will need to start soon. I just don’t know what I’m capable of until I really try.

I packed way too much running gear for the weekend, but I think I’d prefer to have some choices on Sunday morning. I have long pants and some short stretchy compression pants. Three sports bras. Two options for tops. A skirt, in case I feel like it’s the way to go. I’m about to go into my sock drawer and pull out some long stripy socks as well. Just in case. A tutu would have been nice, but I forgot to shop for one. I’ve been so busy.

As far as everything apart from the actual training goes, I’m ready for the City2Surf.

It looks like Sydney has had some pretty brutal winds over the last couple of days. I hope I don’t get blown off the road at the top of Heartbreak Hill. If I do, no big loss. I can catch an updraft and drift off over the ocean. It’s a nice thought. Calming.

Here it comes

So I’ve sort of been cheating on my blog with another blog (of the cooking variety) and I feel really bad about it, but I actually haven’t been able to run much in the last couple of weeks. I did something strange to my back last week, so last weekend was out. The weekend before, I was too lazy to train.

I got up this morning to do a short 10km to sort of get a feeling of whether the City2Surf was going to be hellish. I wanted to get out there and think through some kind of race plan for next Sunday, but it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re on the run and you can’t get hold of any statistics. I tried asking Siri.

Me: What was my result in the City 2 Surf last year?

Siri: Checking on that... Would you like to search the web for “Post letters optimistic SFR stew”?

Me: No. Forget it.

Siri: I didn’t catch that.

Me: Play my Maritime Insurance playlist.

All I could do when I was out on the run was think about whether I wanted to wear a skirt in the race, or my standard stretchy pants. On the way back, all I could think was “I’M BLIND” because of the sun directly in my face. So that was no good.

I’m going to think about it now, to at least maintain the facade of being an organised individual.

As far as I see it, I have two goals. The primary goal is to beat my personal best. The secondary goal, if I really tank it, is to at least qualify for a green entry next year.

Last year, I ran a time of 1:24:55. Hmm. That’s cool. Better than I remembered, when I was on my run this morning. So to beat it, I’d have to run every kilometre in faster than 6 minutes. Eww. I don’t like that quite as much. This is going to hurt.

If I stuff up, the qualifying time for a green bib this year was 90 minutes. Assuming they’re nice people and decide to keep it the same, I’ll get an auto-qualification on the basis of last year’s time anyway. I know I’ll definitely get in under 90 minutes in any case. That’s reassuring.

So, will I run a steady pace, or are there parts I’ll need to push a bit harder to make up for the hills?

Last year's elevation map. It thought the run was only 13.5km long. Silly Garmin.

From the elevation maps recorded over the last two years on my Garmin, I can determine one or two things: The first five kilometres or so are undulating, with a few short hills and some nice little downhill stretches. I could probably afford to up the pace in this section, providing of course that I don’t let myself get pulled by the crowd and burn out too early. Maybe 5:20 or 5:30 pace after a short warmup over the first kilometre, depending on how I’m feeling and whether I’ve eaten too much at breakfast.

Then, we hit Heartbreak Hill. which starts easy and gets harder over two kilometres. Nothing I can’t handle, as long as I keep my head down. I could afford to slow to a pace just below 6:30 here, but I don’t want to let it become a habit.

The next two kilometres after the halfway point are a brief respite, and I should take it easy at this point given that there’s a tough and steep little hill coming up. Maybe a 6:00 pace just to be safe, but it will probably be speedier if last year is anything to go by. The hill is about a kilometre long, and when I hit the top of it at about the 10km point, it’s all downhill from there.

I’ll floor it for the last couple of kilometres because they’re nice and speedy and exhilarating when you can see Bondi looming ahead.

It looks so easy on paper.

Let’s see how we go.

I am concerned though, I still haven’t figured out whether to wear stretchy pants or a skirt yet. This is an important decision, people!