Rock n Roll New York 10km

Summary: Good race coming off two weeks of no running. Fast start with poor finish. Happy overall but the slightly competitive part of me really wanted to do better. LOVE the finisher's medal.

5.00am: Up and getting ready. Not quite as organized as I'd like but make it out the door by 5.45.

5.50am: At subway station waiting for the train. The only people I've seen so far are on their way home after a night out or are sleeping at the station. Catch train uptown to change to Brooklyn train.

6.10am: Catch second train, which is full of other runners. Discover because of construction it won't be stopping at the station I want to get off at. Hop off with everyone else one stop earlier and then just follow the crowd because I have no idea where we are.

7.30am: Race start. The description of the course was "beautiful, tree-lined...flat, fast and festive". And it was...if by flat they actually meant rolling hills. And the worst part was because the course did two laps, I knew they were coming the second time. Despite my lack of interim running, I felt good and was sub 7.00 min/km until about 8km in when my stomach turned against me. This is definitely something I have to work out because I would really like to be able to improve my times. My legs are OK and my breathing is OK but my insides are certainly not. The end result was a finish time of 1:10:xx by my watch. And I am happy with that.

8.50am: Go to bag pick up area. Encounter first serious negative at this race. It is chaos. There are bags laid out on the ground, under people's feet, no one can find their stuff. At this stage I'm feeling very thankful that I kept all of the must have items on me. Eventually manage to get my bag and escape the chaos.

Where did the time go?

Wow, I've got three days until the Rock n Roll New York and I've done nothing since Melbourne.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I've spent the past eight days doing a huge amount of sight seeing and being touristy in Canada. I think I've easily covered 10km every day on foot, just not running.

Let's hope that's enough.

Melbourne Marathon 10km recap

The race now seems so long ago as since then I have spent 32 or so hours travelling half way across the world.

Sunday was nearly perfect for me for running. Nice and cool with virtually no wind and a little overcast. I arrived nice and early to avoid the panic of not being able to find the bag drop off area, toilets, start line and the other 10km runners from my run group.

The plan worked and everything went off without a hitch. I watched the marathoners set off - including an 83 year old dude (way to go!) and then got started on my warm up with my group.

This was not great.

My calves were sore. The small amount of slow jogging I did was really uncomfortable so I dropped back to a fast walk. I told myself it was just because I was running on uneven ground and once I got onto the road it would be better.

Before I knew it, it was race time. As always, I made way up the back of the pack and then stood around for 10 minutes while the faster runners got their start and the sea of people in front of me got across the start line.

Thankfully, my thoughts on the uneven surface appeared to be right. The first couple of kms, my calves were a little sore but after they warmed up it was all good. I started out slow (about 7.10 pace) and then settled into around 6.45 for the the next eight kms. Well, except for km 4 which was really slow at 7.30 and I can't for the life of me remember why.

I'd set my hopes on finishing in about 70 minutes, based on how my training runs had gone. Secretly, I really wanted to beat my 2010 time (OK, so it wasn't really a secret) but didn't think my injury prone lead up was going to allow that. By the eight km mark though, I was feeling good and was on track for about a 68:45 finish.

So I pushed myself a little bit more.

This part of the course was the worst. At just before 8km we went over this foot bridge = hill = unhappy legs. I just kept repeating to myself, "if there's an up then there's going to be a down". That worked pretty well. The end of the bridge takes you within 200m of the finish line but obviously, there's still another 1.8km or so left. This bit of the course is an out and back hair pin next to the MCG. It is boring and I find it demotivating.

However, all complaining aside, those last two kms were my fastest for the day and I crossed the finish line in 68:19. Totally faster than 2010. Not much faster but still...

I can quite happily say this was close to my best possible effort for the day, as after crossing the finish line I proceeded to throw up from the effort of pushing myself those last two kms. It was kind of embarrassing.

Overall, I'm very happy with my run and look forward to the next one in New York. Yay New York!

Rest time

Three days to go until Melbourne Marathon. My legs are very happy to only be doing 10km because they are TIRED.

Could be that last night's RPM class wore them out a little more than I anticipated. The fact that I had to cling to the railing to walk down the stairs post-class may have been indication that they'd worked pretty hard.

I ran just short of 6km tonight in what was an uncomfortable temperature for me. I think one of the things I'd like to work on is getting my body used to running in higher temperatures. Basically, anything over 10 degrees is unpleasant and over 20 degrees is just too much. Clearly that hampers any decent running between November and April - not ideal.

No running or other exercise is planned for between now and Sunday. Hopefully just lots of sleep so I can at least make an effort toward beating last year's time, and as an added bonus get rid of the end of this cold.

This guy's got the right idea

Sweating it out

The change to daylight savings, while only an hour's difference, always knocks me for six. Add it to this stupid cold I've got and I have really been struggling. I slept in pretty late this morning! Whoops!

As it turned out, I got to work about an hour and half later than normal. Why is it, when you're running late, Metro decides to cancel the next train? Clearly I think I'm very important and the train schedule revolves around me.

Despite my lethargy and generally snottiness (yes, I realise that's gross), I've been sticking with the running and RPMing. I figure I'll just sweat the cold right out of me.

Final running group is on tomorrow. I'm sad to finish. Of course, there's always the next one!

One More Week

One more week until Melbourne Marathon. Here's hoping it's a nice cool day without rain (although, I'm pretty confident I'll be fine even if it is a bit rainy - having run in the storm that stopped Melbourne).

One more week until holidays. While not looking forward to 24 hours on a plane, I am very much looking forward to new cities, new sights and catching up with old friends.

One more week to get over this stupid cold I've picked up (no no no no, now is NOT the time for being sick).

One more week to cement my current runnings times. During this morning's 6km, I ran 5 of those kilometers in under 6:30min/km. I am so massively excited and happy that my running program is actually demonstrating an improvement in my running.