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.