I am going to try to keep this one brief. (Famous last words, perhaps?)
Last weekend was the 40th Adelaide Marathon and my 4th year of running in the event.
In 2015 and 2017 I was a pacer for the half marathon (2015 was my first ever pacing gig) and in 2016 I ran the full marathon with friend Beck.
This year, backing up from UTA100 I had originally planned to run the 5k but then I saw the medals for the full, half and 10k, and I decided I needed one! I thought a half would be a bit ambitious but I was pretty confident I’d have a 10k in me. And I emailed club coach Kent to ask if they wanted a 1 hour pacer (I knew there was no way I was going to be getting close to a PB, so I thought I’d rather try to help some other people get their goal times!)
The marathon weekend kicked off with a gala celebration at the Adelaide Town Hall, hosted by the Lord Mayor and featuring special guests, marathon MC Pat Carroll and event ambassador Jess Trengove, fresh from her bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games. Along with those two VIPs were a number of other VIPs – the Adelaide Marathon Warriors and Legends. Warriors are those who have run 10 or more Adelaide Marathons, and Legends have done 25 or more! I can’t even contemplate running the same marathon that many times but I have huge respect for all those who have! It was a great night, I got to catch up with a lot of people and meet some new ones.
On Saturday was the Flamingo Fun Run for the kids – a great initiative, putting it on its own day. A few of my Board colleagues ran in the event and by all accounts it was a lot of fun!
Saturday was also bib collection day – the crew had been at the Oval on the Friday as well, but with many people working during the week, the Saturday bib collection proved popular! There were also a few expo stands there on Saturday, so people had the opportunity to browse before it got hectic on Sunday!
After collecting my bibs (one race number and one ‘PACER’ bib) I hung around and helped out with the fun job of unpacking the medals and bundling them into bunches of 20 to make it easier for the volunteers to hand them out! I had a great production line going with another volunteer, Peter, who was doing the bundling as I struggled to keep up with the unpacking!
I got to catch up with a whole lot of the volunteers for Sunday, as they came in for a pre-event briefing.
On Sunday I arrived early for my event, getting to the Oval around 6:30 so I’d get to see the marathoners and half marathoners start, before the 10k start at 8am. Many of the volunteers had already been working for hours by then!
The marathon started at 7am and as always there were a lot of familiar faces out there! As per usual I was pretty happy not to be among the 450-odd runners heading off to run the 42.2km – but the marathon medal was SO pretty so I was ALMOST tempted! The weather was ideal – only a couple of drops of rain and not too cold!
After the marathoners set off, I went to collect my green pacer balloon – I had asked for a yellow or a green one. My outfit was chosen to fit with the hallowed turf of the Adelaide Oval – a retro green and gold Australian cricket shirt and matching cap, with more conventional running attire on the bottom half. My goal was to be easily visible but also relatively comfortable!
The half marathon started 15 minutes before us, and I knew a lot of runners in the half as well! A couple of my fellow Board members, Gary and Veronica, were pacing 2:00 and 2:06 (6 minute kilometres) respectively. There were 6 pacers altogether in the half, to go along with the 7 in the full – I don’t think I’d ever seen that many pacers in one of our events before! Pacing in the half would be tricky – there were around 1000 starters, so with all the congestion they’d probably be walking for a few minutes, and would then need to gradually pick up the pace.
When it came time to start the 10k, I wasn’t sure where to position myself! I was one of two pacers, the other being 50 minutes. On previous occasions, I’d mostly had pacers before and after me, so it was easy to position myself in between. This time I asked around, trying to find some people who were around 1 hour pace, so I could work out where I needed to be.
As for the marathon and the half before us, the 10k kicked off to the sound of AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’. I’m pretty sure the last time I’d heard that song at the Adelaide Oval was when I’d seen AC/DC live there some years ago!
There were close to 500 people in the 10k so I did find it a bit hard to get going! I would have less time to make up any ‘lost’ time, so I needed to get moving as quickly as possible! My new Garmin watch allowed me to set a 5 second ‘window’ (as opposed to my previous one which had a minimum ‘window’ of 15 seconds) so I had my pace alerts set between 5:55 and 6:00. If I strayed outside this range my watch would let me know!
It only took about 1km to hit my goal pace and I managed to hold onto it the whole way, losing a bit of time on the uphills and trying not to gain too much on the downs! (In my first pacing gig, 3 years earlier, it had taken 7km to hit goal pace, what with the crowds and the undulating terrain!)
I had quite a few people around me but there were a few who were with me more than others. Amelia, a student from the USA who hadn’t been running much since she’d been in Australia for about the past year, was hoping to get sub 60 which was around her previous 10km time. Another girl Anna said she hadn’t run 10km for quite some time, and recently had only done 5km. I told her to think of it as 5km, and then after 5km wipe the slate clean and pretend she was starting 5km again! I wasn’t sure if it would work but it did! (I also spread the parkrun news to Amelia, she hadn’t heard of parkrun before and happily the 10km course took us right past the start of the Torrens parkrun course, which I duly pointed out to her!)
I didn’t stop at any of the drink stations but did remember to say thankyou to all the volunteers! I did see quite a few familiar faces out marshalling, including the ever encouraging Gary and the ever colourful Michelle and Tracey.
It was also great, as always, to see marathoners and half marathoners out on course – it really did seem like I knew everyone!
Towards the end I caught up with Board Chair Voula and fellow board member Gary’s daughter Tahlia, both carrying injuries and both of whom told me beforehand they’d be running with me. They’d been ahead of me all race but eventually I did catch them. Voula got behind a bit but I yelled out to her as she’d asked me beforehand to give her a push if she started to fall behind! It worked!
I was chatting with one of the other girls when I caught Voula and Tahlia, and Tahlia asked me to keep talking as it was a nice distraction! Then we caught up with a girl in front of us who had her iPod in and was loudly singing along – I suggested to Tahlia that if she wanted some entertainment she should stick closely with that girl!
Before too long (less than an hour, in fact!) we approached the entrance to the Adelaide Oval and the finish line. Around here I saw a familiar face, it was Matt, who was running the marathon but had somehow managed to miss the turnoff for the second lap and run into the stadium instead! (I’m sure a lot of marathoners would have been tempted to do the same!)
Into the stadium and onto the oval we went. I realised I was going to be a few minutes ahead of schedule so halfway around the oval I decided to stop and cheer some of the other 10k finishers on for a minute or two, until I got closer to the 1 hour mark. I had started my watch on the gun (something I always do as a pacer) so even those runners who had started ahead of me, were going to get under the 1 hour.
My clock time was 59:36 which was respectable although as I said I did have to stop to let the clock catch up! No way was I crossing the line in 58 minutes!
After finishing I had a quick chat with Anna and Amelia who were both happy with their results, and then headed off to get an all-important coffee before helping out at the merch stand which was doing great business, ably manned by Lee-Ann who had been there since about 4:30am! I quickly learned how to operate the Point Of Sale app so Lee-Ann could deal with other stuff, although I am a bit challenged when it comes to working iPhones so I had to ask the customers for help!
I caught up with marathoner Jenny who had had to pull out due to injury, and we happened to be out the front of the oval as lead runner John ran past, heading towards the finish line. I then quickly made my way down to the oval to see him finish, it was great to see a local runner take the win as this year there was increased prizemoney which attracted elite runners from interstate. It was the first time I’d have the privilege of seeing the winner cross the line – as a half marathon pacer I’d come in after the marathon winner both times, and when I ran the marathon 2 years ago – well needless to say I was also behind the winner!
I headed back down to the oval for a little while just before 10am, as I knew there would be a lot of marathoners coming in around the 3 hour mark. Just after the 3 hours I saw Amelia, who later told me she hadn’t had a great run but she did manage to get 3rd place – not bad for a ‘bad day’!
After that I spent most of the day in the merch area, chatting to fellow runners who all seemed to have really enjoyed the event, including a number from interstate.
I was almost tempted to join in the 5k, a new addition to the AMF programme, a fundraiser for Arthritis SA, which started at 11am and gave even more people the opportunity to be part of the event.
I saw a lot of the volunteers come back from their marshalling or drink station posts, including my vote for best dressed (with all due respect to Michelle and Tracey!)
And I had to get the obligatory selfie with marshal Gary, plus he took this pic which I thought was pretty cool!
The rest of the day went pretty quickly and gradually the crowd began to disperse.
The highlight of the day, which a few people have posted about on Facebook but which I will also mention here, was getting to see not only the first finisher, but also the last. After around 7.5 hours, one of the Adelaide Marathon Legends (having completed over 30 Adelaide Marathons – I forget the exact number), Sue entered the arena and every person who was still at the ground was on the oval at the finish line to welcome her. AC/DC thundered from the PA system and MC Pat Carroll and the crowd gave her a rousing reception. It’s a shame that there weren’t more people there to see it, but hopefully in future years there will be more people there right to the very end (like at the finish of Yurrebilla!) And best of all, she made it back in time to get a coffee before the coffee shop closed (when I had spoken to her at the start, this was her greatest concern about being potentially slow!)
Following close behind Sue was Voula’s husband John who was the course sweeper, on a bicycle. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can sit on a bike for that long – great work John!
I managed to sneak away once Sue had finished, but a lot of the core team were still there and would have been there for a good few hours after that (after having been there well before dawn!)
So that leads nicely into the thanks. Anything I say here is going to be completely inadequate because it was a massive effort from a lot of people to make this thing happen. Being there from the start to the finish of the marathon I got to see a whole lot. I don’t want to leave anyone out, and I know there were a lot of volunteers there who put in a HUGE number of hours, but these are the people (some paid, some unpaid) who were there Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and for pretty long hours too: Race Director Ben, SARRC staff Cassandra, Lee-Ann, Paul and Harry, and super volunteer Sheena. Along with that we had Malcolm on timing, course measurer Don, and course marker Peter who started at something like 3am?
Thanks especially to them but also to every single one of the volunteers who helped make this what I would like to say the biggest and best Adelaide Marathon Festival yet! (I can definitely say it was the best one I’ve been involved with!)
Can’t wait to see what next year’s event brings!