The Melbourne Marathon provided many lessons for me in 2010.
It is often a challenge to ensure the best pre-race meal is tracked down when not in a familiar city with well known restaurants at your door. Following a little research I decided to head across to a gourmet Italian restaurant and selected my favourite meal with a main size lasagne take away. Now in the past I have learnt the hard way that it is not very smart to drink Coke Zero the night before a early morning marathon start particularly if you wish to get some sleep. The latest lesson was that it is not very wise to eat lasagne and then have to rise early to run a 42.195km race. The meal left me feeling very heavy and full for the evening and this was unfortunately to continue during the race.
The rush to the start line was far from ideal as it was very challenging to find a taxi to take me to the start line. The next challenge was for the taxi driver to find a way to get close to the start line with a number of road blocks in place around the Melbourne area. I was fortunate to arrive with just under 30 minutes to the start of the race and had to find a way to get through the crowds, check in my bag and then return to the start line for the big race. It just so happened that with all the excitement it was also now that I urgently needed to find a toilet. Now this was pretty much impossible with the clock ticking down and the large crowds.
OK - so it was finally race time and it was great to be on the start line ready to run. I had been making good pace leading up to the 10km mark although my stomach was not feeling great and I decided to make a short pit stop at the stage to look to make life a little easier over the next 32km. While this certainly did help - it was very clear that things were not quite right in terms of my stomach and it would turn out that this would make the challenge all that much tougher over the closing stages.
The next lesson was in relation to my shoes. The ongoing search for the right footwear is a continued frustration with Size 14 Width 4E Asics previously giving me issues in a training run I made the call to return to a New Balance running shoe that was a little larger and would hopefully not create any further issues. Well was I wrong! Following limited training runs in the New Balance I thought that all would be fine although it turned out that the shoes although a little larger created new issues with a large blister forming on the inside of the left heel and the large right toe more painful than ever with every step forward. Now I would have normally stopped to assess the damage although when in a race to the finish there are few options and I had to simply continue and deal with the damage after the finish line.
I had been keeping good pace all considered for the opening half marathon stage and it was at the 25km stage that I spotted a older gentleman in a Superman outfit that I had noticed during the pre-race warm ups.
The final 25+km was extremely challenging and the closing stages were more of a shuffle than anything else with many moments spent walking the Tan rather than running as I simply had nothing left in the tank with the stomach and feet issues now backed up with the warm Melbourne weather.
It sure was a very low key welcome to the awesome MCG and I pushed it around as hard as possible to simply make it across the line. While not feeling in such good form as previous years it is always special to cross the finish line. The end result was that I was feeling very poor in the stomach before, during and after the marathon. This would be the first and last marathon run in the New Balance shoes as I ended up with my second large black toe that would eventually drop off and a large blood blister on the left heel. All up some war wounds that would heal and provide me with a little more motivation to improve my results in 2011.
10k Race Time - 0:56:35
21k Race Time - 1:55:09
Finish time - 4:25:59
Net time - 4:25:28
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