Sydney Half Marathon Recap
I finally managed to put a race together!!
After the Canberra marathon I was feeling pretty disappointed because in back to back events I had pretty much screwed up my race strategy and ended up limping across the finish line which isn’t the greatest of feelings.
Leading into the Sydney Marathon I decided that I would do a few things different to see whether or not it had some sort of impact, the key things I focussed on in the lead up were:
Body battery
Sleep
Nutrition/hydration
One of my most used stats from my Garmin is the body battery function. Since I have started wearing it I consistently refer to it to see how my body is recovering or where my energy levels are because it’s a good reflection of how I feel. It was quite obvious on reflection that I didn’t manage my body well prior to the last race having worked some crazy shifts for work and then having a busy day before the marathon. This time 4 days out I started to track my activity and keep an eye on how my body was feeling, no crazy night shifts.
The first part of managing this was letting my body fully recover and not doing any strenuous runs, I kept low volume through the week but continued with some frequent sessions just to keep the legs loose, this seemed to keep my mind and body in a good state.
Because I wasn’t overloading my body with running I then focussed on my body battery, so 4 days out I became strict with my sleep and always going to bed at a good hour, I also didn’t do any crazy early mornings. I felt that the end result for this was that I gave myself the maximum opportunity each night to recharge and so by the time race day came around I was almost at my max for body battery, this was a win.
Nutrition has been my other big failure and the biggest part of that I think is hydration and there is probably two reasons for that. The first reason is that on race day I just fail to consumer liquid during the event, I hate slowing for the aid stations if I am in a rhythm so I just don’t take enough in. The second part is that in the days leading up to the event I don’t consistently hydrate. Leading up to this event I made sure I was always consuming good fluids (water or electrolytes) so that I wasn’t just flooding my body the day before and so that it gave me a good time for it to be absorbed.
Needless to say with the above changes I felt primed for race day, physically from a “do I have my legs ready” perspective as well as from a body fuelling perspective.
So the run itself, well this went pretty much to plan, I definitely couldn’t be disappointed with the outcome. My previous personal best was 95 minutes plus some seconds so I was aiming for better than that which I felt like I had in me. On the side I had my eye on 90 minutes which is a bit of a marker for me and one of the goals I want to break this year though if I didn’t feel like it on the day I was content to drop off this pace.
I got to the start at a reasonable hour and had a gel about 15 minutes before, made my way into the starting section which was good because I was reasonably close to the front, I was primed. However something that was pretty disappointing is that they started the race almost one person at a time which meant that I was a few minutes back of the 90 minute pacer, it meant I largely had to pace myself rather than just hanging with the group and not having to think too much, this was annoying.
First 10km went really well, felt great, had another gel, pace was good, legs felt perfect, this also had a positive impact on mindset because when you are running well it feeds positivity into your mind, to use a term from a book I have been reading, “there was no chimp on my shoulder telling me negative things”.
The next 5km were all about maintaining form, pace and nutrition which I did, the course was a bit windy so I had to be mindful of maintaining pace. There was also a section of gravel which was annoying to run on, but both kids found places along the course to cheer me on which kept me going, moving into the back end of the run I felt good.
What I hadn’t planned for was the uphill during the 16th kilometre. Mentally this killed me a bit and it also killed my average pace, by the time I got to the top I had doubt in my mind that I had pushed too hard, this sat in my head for the next 2-3km unfortunately and I went a little conservative to make sure I didn’t blow up.
Mentally and physically the hardest part was the last 3km because it’s an out and back that’s a bit lumpy and by this stage I just wanted it to be over, on the one hand I was happy that I was definitely going to PB, on the other hand I was a bit disappointed I’d missed an opportunity to go sub 90. I made a few surges towards the end but my time was largely set but then, I’d be around the 92 mark which when I reflect back I am really proud of. I’m proud because I had put a race together where I probably got the result I should have expected, the training that I had completed had probably helped me get a better result so it gives motivation to keep investing in good session, and mentally I feel like I got a bit of a monkey off my back so I am in a positive mood heading into my next period of training.
A successful event :)
Michael