running writing

Yesterday was the fourth and final race in the 2020-2021 Adelaide Trail Runners Summer Series. Just to explain the series briefly, it consists of 4 races across the summer, at Anstey Hill, Cleland, Onkaparinga and finally Belair. It was originally put on by Yumigo! which then became Ultra Runners South Australia, and this was the first year it was under the Adelaide Trail Runners banner. The 4 events have short, medium and long courses, and each event is a stand-alone event but participants also accrue points towards age group awards at the end of the series. It is a great incentive to enter the whole series rather than individual races, especially for those who are unlikely to be at the ‘pointy end’ of the field! I have run a number of events in the series in the past, and once I managed to run 3 of the 4 races which allowed me to scrape in for 3rd place in my age group (1st and 2nd in my age group also happened to be in the top 3 overall for the series – tough age group!). I don’t quite understand the point system but all I know is that going into the final event I was 1st in my age group for the short course and the points system is designed that only your best 3 points scores are counted. Which basically means that I would still win it even if I didn’t show up to Belair. But where’s the fun in that? I’d already paid for it, plus, I’m training for a half marathon and if I didn’t run the 10k at Belair I was going to have to do a road 19km. So naturally I went to Belair!

I hadn’t run recently at Belair – I think probably my last time running there was 2 years ago at the end of Five Peaks. Belair was also the site of my very first trail race in 2015, one of the very first events put on by Trail Running SA. My run itself was not particularly memorable (14km in 1:31:12, average pace 6:30 per km. 126th out of 188 and 44th female out of 96). Sadly I had only just started my blog then and I didn’t write a report on this one – I’d love to read it now! I was, however, lucky enough to win the random draw prize for a pair of Salomon trail shoes – and I’ve been running in Salomon trail shoes ever since! (I’ve paid for the rest of them, by the way!)

As for the other events in the series, the short course started after the long and medium so theoretically we could get there later, however I did get there about an hour before my event was due to start, to ensure I was able to get a car park. It also gave me time to go for a little wander to loosen up the legs, and not have to rush around.

With a bit of rain having fallen on Saturday, I was expecting it to be somewhat muddy out on the trails so I had decided against debuting my brand new trail shoes which have been sitting in my wardrobe patiently waiting since August 2019! What I was NOT expecting (but could quite easily have known, had I checked the weather forecast) was that it was COLD at the start! I even contemplated running in long sleeves (luckily I’d put a thin long sleeved top in my car as an afterthought, as well as a thicker one) and was annoyed to find that my fleece gloves were not in the car!

Standing at the start line, I was probably towards the middle of the pack (as per the other 3 events there were 2 waves and I was in the first wave) and there were quite a few women in front of me at the start. I had my long sleeved top on over my singlet at this stage and with a couple of minutes to go, decided that I would take it off and shove it in my race vest. That ended up being a very good idea – it gave me an extra layer to put on at the end, and it didn’t take long once we started, for me to warm up!

Given that we all finish at the same place and all courses share one common drink station, there must have been runners from long and medium courses that I encountered along the way. It was difficult to tell as I came up alongside someone and (hopefully) passed them, whether they were in my event, whether they were long or medium, or indeed whether they were just members of the public out for a nice run/hike on a Sunday morning! And I was trying to hold onto the ‘don’t look back’ philosophy so I couldn’t very well turn around once I’d passed them to see if I was in fact competing against them! So I just went with the assumption that they were ALL in my event and I would try to pass any female I happened to see (and hopefully not let them pass me again).

One such person was a girl in a dark green long sleeved top, who I later found out was Amy. I knew she was in the short course as I had seen her at the start – I’d noticed because she was wearing the same long sleeved top (albeit in a different colour) as I now wasn’t wearing. She seemed to be just that little bit too far in front of me but I decided to keep her in sight and hope for a bit of a surge at the end. As per the previous races I didn’t know what position I was in, although I did know that Anna and Rosie were both ahead of me again, so I was well and truly out of medal contention even if there were no other ladies in between Amy and the other two.

I was also trying to stick close to Steve, who I knew from many previous running events, and who had been within sight of me throughout the whole event. We had gone back and forth, sometimes I’d lead for a while, then he’d lead and I’d try to keep him in sight.

I reckon around the halfway mark I did eventually catch Amy and pass her but I knew she was not far behind. Uphills are not my strongest point and there was a bit of uphill in the course, and I think she passed me a couple of times on the uphills (I went with the 8 step run/8 step walk strategy again – that seems to work well for me)

There wasn’t so much single track as at Onkaparinga so I didn’t find myself in the same situation as last time where I’d either be stuck behind someone and unable to pass, or have someone breathing down my neck (and often both!). There was really only one spot where I remember it being a bit of a bottleneck and that was the infamous Echo Tunnel at around the halfway mark. I hadn’t realised that the tunnel would be part of the course, but when I found out during a conversation with Heather and Peter at parkrun the previous day, I thought it would be a good idea to take my head torch to navigate through the tunnel. Well it doesn’t really require navigation, it’s a straight tunnel but VERY dark so a little light would make things a lot easier! (At the start line Heather said she also had brought her head torch!) As I saw the sign indicating that the tunnel was just ahead, I opened up the pocket on my race vest and took out the head torch and put it on. What a difference that made! I’m not sure why I didn’t run/walk on the low side of the tunnel (often filled with flowing water, but on this occasion it was bone dry) – not only would I not have to bend like a pretzel to avoid bumping my head on the roof, I could also theoretically overtake the conga line of people feeling their way through the tunnel! Anyway, if anyone is reading this in preparation for doing this event in future, if you take nothing else from this race report, TAKE A TORCH! Even your phone torch will do!

I had been thinking prior to this event, trying to guess what theme the RMA ladies would go with at this event (following on from Christmas in December, cricket in January and tennis in February) – and when I saw them I thought ‘OF COURSE! How did I not guess that?’ – they had gone with an AFL theme, with the AFL season due to start this week. Bravo ladies – definitely a welcome sight as always!

The last little bit of the course was fun! Lots of downhill! Keeping Steve in sight became a bit more challenging because he was going SO FAST. At one point I thought I saw someone on a bike flying down the hill, but no, it was just Steve! It was great to have him to follow because it made me run faster to try to keep up, and forget about the potential threat of Amy looming behind me!

And, just as I had at Onkaparinga, when I saw the finish line I had a sneaky peek over my shoulder and couldn’t see anyone. Whatever position I was in now, that was where I would stay!

As soon as I crossed the finish line, my first thought was ‘coffee and a brownie’! It was Caravino, the same coffee van as last time, and last time I had opted for an almond croissant over a brownie, so I decided this time I needed to test out the brownie! (Spoiler alert, it was TO DIE FOR!) I was also pleased to see that they had compostable coffee cups, one small piece of feedback for next time, it would be good to have some kind of sign that the cups are compostable so that people know they can take them home and put them in their green bin. I saw the rubbish bins overflowing with cups at the end, and I know trail runners are generally pretty eco-friendly types (most trail runs now having moved away from plastic cups at drink stations) so I am sure that many of them would have taken them home if they’d known.

When I did eventually look at the results I saw that Amy was less than 14 seconds behind me! If not for me trying to keep up with Steve, she probably would have caught me!

Overall it’s been a really great series, and well done to Adelaide Trail Runners and all the fabulous volunteers for making it happen! At the end of Belair I was KIND OF glad it was over (only because I had to work so damn hard at the end!) but now in hindsight I kind of wish there were more events as I feel like I have been improving throughout the series. Which I guess is what you want! I definitely feel like I earned my bling at Belair more than at any of the other events! I look forward to running it again in future, and I think now that I have a bit of trail momentum I might have a go at the Trail Running SA winter series!

Until next time…

 

Never before had I run at the site of Race 3 in the 2020-21 Summer Trail Series – Onkaparinga River. In fact, I didn’t even really know where it was, other than ‘way down south’. I was pretty sure I’d seen once from a winery at McLaren Vale but that was about it, so it was a bit exciting to be running in parts unknown! As usual I didn’t pay much attention to the map or elevation, although at the start, Mal had a printed map that indicated the short course was 9.4km (so in other words, somewhere between 8 and 10km!) and the elevation was less than Anstey Hill and Cleland. Plus the finish was uphill. I didn’t really want to know that but it was helpful to know.

Numbers were good again – almost 400 finishers all up, with 147 in the long course, 127 in the medium and 122 in the short.

As I did for the last event at Cleland I had a bit of a ‘taper’ week – I did my usual Tuesday and Thursday runs but abbreviated, aiming for about 45 minutes – and then gave parkrun a miss on Saturday.

Being Fringe time I went to shows on both Friday and Saturday night – Saturday night’s thankfully was not a late one and I was designated driver. I was seriously craving Coke when I was on the way home and was planning to stop at a servo to get one after I dropped my friends home, but one of them, Chris, suggested that Coke just before bed was probably not a good idea. I thank her for that because she was right, and when I got home I drank some water which tasted pretty damn good and did not interfere with my pre-race sleep! (If it matters, pre-race dinner was a mushroom pizza from Anchovy Bandit. So good. Didn’t need to eat the whole thing but did anyway. Even though I was only running 9.4ish kilometres the next day!)

Given that I didn’t know where it was, plus as usual the short course started after the long and medium, meaning that I would need to allow more time for parking and walking to the start, I allowed plenty of time to get there, meaning that I arrived early enough to see the medium course runners set off before joining the (at that time non-existent!) portaloo queue. I mean the queue was non-existent, the portaloos were very much existent. Plus they were the fancy ones with the mirrors so I could check my hair on the way out – bonus!

Again the weather was pretty good – it had been a hot week but thankfully had cooled down by the weekend. It was sunny – which wasn’t so much an issue during the race, more so on the drive down, on a narrow windy (not to mention unfamiliar) road where there were times I was driving straight into the sun!

As in the other 2 races, there were 2 waves for each distance. Having started in the first wave at the first two events, I figured that was the go again! We all lined up by the timing mats only to be told that we were starting in the opposite direction – if the race director wasn’t sure about which way we were going, I’m not sure there was much hope for me being able to find my way (especially as a virgin in these parts!)

Anyway, we eventually set off in the right direction and I figured I’d just follow the crowd as I normally do, except then I couldn’t, because they all took off and I knew better than to try to keep up. That would only end badly for me!

I was on my own for a little while before encountering some of the longer course runners. That was when things started to get interesting!

You see, one thing I didn’t know beforehand (not that it would have made much difference) was that this course has a lot of single track. A LOT. While I don’t mind a bit of single track, what I don’t like so much is being caught up in congestion on a single track, which was exactly what happened. For the longest time I was either wanting to overtake those in front (but not being able to) and/or having people breathing down my neck (but with no room to overtake). I figured I’d best just suck it up and wait for the trail to open up a bit. Some people did stop on the side and let others through – I thank them for that but it’s not my style to do that myself – unless I personally need to stop for some reason, I’ll just keep moving.

Given that people were behind me, I didn’t feel like I could do my ‘walk/run’ that I normally do on some of the longer/steeper hills – I felt like I had to keep running. So that took a bit more out of me than I would have liked, but conversely the times I got ‘stuck’ behind someone, I was able to have a bit of a rest and give the legs a break. So it probably all evened out in the end. Not that it mattered. The lead pack was so far in front at this stage (I assume – I hadn’t seen them since about 200m from the start) there was no chance of getting anywhere near them this time!

Having never been here before you’d think I would have taken a moment to take in the views – but nope! After the race several people were commenting on how lovely the scenery was. Luckily some of them had stopped to take photos otherwise I would have had NO IDEA! I must go back there one day and just walk it.

Even though I was watching my feet and straight ahead of me instead of admiring the scenery – I did trip on a rock once. Luckily I managed to maintain a vertical orientation and hopefully helpfully pointed said rock out to the person behind me. I didn’t hear a crash or any swearing so I am assuming they didn’t trip on it! (There was a bit of carnage on show at the end though – quite a few people had gone arse over, possibly admiring the view? Susan and her first aid team had a bit of patching up work to do!)

There was only one drink station on the course (for all 3 distances) which was pretty smart – given that we don’t do cups anymore, many people take their own hydration, and given that due to COVID now we aren’t allowed to fill our own bottles/flasks/bladders, drink stops take longer than they used to, so a lot of the faster runners don’t stop. Therefore, it was manageable having only one drink station and it meant less volunteers were required. It was the RMA crew again and this time they had adopted a tennis theme, given that the Australian Open finals were on that weekend. It was also quite funny for me because prior to going out on Saturday night, I was at a friend’s house and his son asked me if I wanted to play tennis with him. Having not played tennis (and I use the term ‘played’ VERY loosely) in… at least 20 years, it could have ended in disaster but I sort of remembered how to hit a ball. Still can’t serve to save my life though! So that was a bit of a highlight for me!

Did I mention that there was a lot of single track? For quite a while in the back half I was following a guy in black with blue socks (I believe his name was Sam) and at one stage he asked me if I wanted to pass him – I didn’t at that stage, he was running at just the right pace for me so I sat behind him – not too close, mind you, but he must have got sick of it after awhile because just as I was thinking about possibly making a move next time I got enough space to do so, he took off! He ended up finishing about a minute ahead of me. Not long after this I was overtaken by Darren, who I encouraged to try to catch him but he didn’t quite get there – he must have had a very strong finish!

Now I try to go by the rule “don’t look back” MOST of the time. There are a few reasons why it is not a good idea. One, you might trip over if you try to look back while still moving forward. Two, you’re letting the person behind you (if there is a person behind you) know that you’re aware of them and that you might see them as a threat. Maybe I am over thinking this but I know if I was following someone and they kept looking back, that MY first thought would be, “I’ve got this!” So I try not to do it.

On this particular occasion though, I DID do it. I looked back 4 times in the final stretch – there were definitely people behind me but estimating the distance to the finish line and the distance that they were behind me, after the 4^th look I was confident that there was no way they were going to catch me. If they were fast enough to overtake me now, they would surely have done it earlier. And there was always a good chance they were not even in the short course event, as the finish was common to all 3 distances. So long story short, I was pretty comfortable with my position at that stage. And those in front of me (nearest were Sam and Darren) were too far ahead for me to even contemplate catching.

So I made my way up the hill to the finish line. For me it was probably the most challenging of the 3 races so far, even though elevation-wise it is technically the easiest. And I’m not the best going up hills so generally less elevation is good for me! In terms of average pace it was the fastest, but again with less elevation you’d expect that. I was pretty spent by the end so I just kept walking back to the car to get my reusable coffee cup, because, will run for coffee! (Unless there is also wine, in which case wine might win out!) When I got back to the coffee van (a new one to me – Caravino) – I was super excited to find that not only did they use Sublime coffee but also they had a number of different vegan goodies! I asked the girl to choose for me between an almond crème croissant and a chocolate brownie. She chose the croissant for me and it was way delicious!

Not long afterwards they started the presentations, I had only just got back from dropping some stuff off at my car and didn’t realise until then but I had managed to scrape in for 3^rd place behind Anna (doing her first race of the series) and Rosie (who beat me in Race 1, but pleasingly I had closed the time gap slightly – from close to 3 minutes at Anstey Hill, to about half that here at Onkaparinga. I was surprised to find out that 4^th place was only about 20 seconds behind me – she must have been in that pack that I kept seeing when I looked back – I could have sworn they were further away than that! Out of all the races so far I think I definitely earned my place most in this one!

Thanks again to all the fabulous volunteers and Adelaide Trail Runners for putting on another fantastic event – as I said before I definitely intend to come back and actually appreciate the scenery (although I may have to supply my own coffee and croissant next time!)

Race 4 is only 3 weeks away at Belair – can’t wait!

This weekend was the second race of the Adelaide Trail Runners Summer Trail Series, at Cleland. You can read my report from Race 1 at Anstey Hill here.

I have run this event once before, in 2019. Last year I was volunteering – it would still be a few days before I was cleared to start running again after 4 long months! So it was good to be back out there again running!

This is my closest event in the series, and an area where I run pretty regularly. As per last month I hadn’t done quite as much trail running as I would have liked in the leadup to the event. I think I did maybe 2 trail runs?

Prior to my half marathon in November, I was in a pretty good routine of having a ‘drop down’ week every 4^th week. After the half the routine kind of fell apart as I had a very easy 4 weeks to recover from the half, and never really got back into the ‘3 weeks on 1 week off’ routine. So I decided at the start of this year to get back into it again, and this week seemed as good as any to have a quiet week. So I ran 8km Tuesday and Thursday (aiming for around 45 minutes where I would normally run for about an hour) and then volunteered at parkrun on Saturday, hoping that this would lead to fresh legs on Sunday!

I entered the whole series, short course, and as per all the other events the long course started at 7, medium at 7:30 and short at 8. I still needed to get there early though because there were a lot of medium and long course runners, therefore the carpark would have been pretty full had I got there after 7:30! (Plus it turns out a lot of people don’t know how to park between two white lines, so there were less parks than there should have been!)

Earlier in the week I had to clean my front windscreen as I could hardly see through it. I did a really crappy job of it, leaving streaks right in my line of sight. I thought to myself, next time I go for petrol I’ll fix that. Then, on the drive up to Cleland, it started raining lightly so I put my wipers on. And then it dawned on me – why did I not think of doing that a few days ago! Windscreen = clean! *facepalm*

The light shower on the way up was all the rain we got, and really the conditions could not have been better. I had my arm warmers on as it was a bit chilly at the start, but while standing on the start line with about 2 minutes until go time, I quickly took them off and put them in my race vest. I had my sunnies on my head but it was overcast throughout and I didn’t actually have to put them on my face until well after I’d finished running.

Being there so early I went for a short walk to loosen up my legs, and taking note of some of the course markers along the way. While walking back through the carpark to the start line, I came across a marshal with 2 big foam hands and asked her about the course, she informed me that the medium course runners were about to come through. So it was good to see that part of the course in action (tight turn past a red car) before having to run it myself half an hour later!

I ran into Robin, a regular runner with the Sunday group that I occasionally run with, who was also doing the short course. I realised that I didn’t know how long the short course was (other than that it should be less than 10km) so I asked him, he said 8.6km. My response was that I would estimate the distance to be anything from 7km to 10km given the notoriously approximate distances on trails!

Once again we had a 2 wave start, and I went in the first wave. This time I was closer to the middle of the pack. Race director Brett warned us of a ditch about 100m in, so we wouldn’t trip on it. And I remembered the tight hairpin turn a little further along, from running the event in 2019.

The start was pretty kind, a bit of downhill and some small hills which were runnable. There were 2 main big climbs which you can see from the elevation map. I ran/walked all of the steeper hills – instead of 20 steps walk/20 steps run, I went with 10 and 10 – I’d managed to conquer the ‘Big Dipper’ on the Chambers loop using this method and it seemed to work relatively well on this occasion as well, although a lot of people did tend to pass me on the uphills. Uphills have never been my favourite! I think maybe overall there wasn’t as much climb as at Anstey Hill.

For a lot of the race I was following Troy, who was wearing a dark green shirt and therefore blended quite nicely into the background, making him a bit difficult to follow! (Meanwhile I, in my fluoro pink top, would have been quite easy to spot for whoever was behind me!) He ended up finishing about 30 seconds ahead of me, and despite the camouflage I was able to keep him in sight for the most part!

At one of the drink stations the volunteer told me I was in 2^nd place, I said ‘let’s keep it that way!’ I knew there was one short course runner, a young girl in an Adelaide Harriers singlet, who was ahead of me. At the time I thought it was the same girl who beat me at Anstey Hill and she beat me by a number of minutes, so I wasn’t expecting to catch her and 2^nd place would do nicely (even though only 1^st place got a bottle of wine – a very nice drop from Chaffey Bros!). I later found out she was a completely different person!

I intentionally didn’t look at my watch the whole time – no idea how far I’d gone, or how far I had left to go. I think that added to my enjoyment – I was just appreciating the moment and taking it all in (wank wank!)

The first photographer I actually saw (Lachlan was at the start line as well as later in the course but I was too busy telling myself not to trip over on the ditch to notice!) was Sputnik. As I ran past him he told me I could use his photos in my blog, I always ask for permission before using official race photos in my blog but he thought he’d save me the trouble!

Later on down the road I saw Lachlan and I thought I might as well ask him while I saw him, he of course also said yes, and the photo he took captures me asking him if it was OK to use said photo in my blog!

Probably the highlight of the race for me was the RMA drink station, they were all dressed up like Test cricketers! Not only was it extremely entertaining but as a huge cricket fan it totally made my day! (As per normal in the shorter races, I prefer to carry my own drinks so I don’t have to break up the momentum by stopping, but I still appreciate them being there!). As I approached I asked Voula, who had a bat, to hit the imaginary ball to me, and I took what I can only say would have been described as a ‘classic catch’! So much fun!

At one point in the race I passed Emily, who was leading. Not long after that, we came to a sign that had 2 arrows, one pointing left and one right. This indicated that two of the distances would go one way and the other distance would go the other. I wasn’t able to see until I got right up to it, which way we had to go. I couldn’t rely on following the person in front of me, (not that you should ever do that in a trail race because it assumes they know where they’re going) because by this stage all the distances were mixed up. I worked out that we had to go left, which was uphill and a bit of a tight turn, and in the process of slowing down to take a look at the sign, Emily passed me. Oh well, it was good while it lasted!

Around the 5km mark we started going downhill, and that was really fun! I was fully expecting more uphill, having not studied the course. At one stage during the downhill section I passed Emily again, knowing that she would pass me on the next uphill section. Then I got a bit confused when I went past the volunteer who had told me I was in 2^nd place, and he told me I had held my spot – then I thought maybe someone ELSE was also ahead – oh well, I can only do what I can do, let’s just enjoy all this delightful downhill because at some point we’ll start going up again!

Coming back along Steub Track there were signs indicating how far to Cleland Wildlife Park (the first one I saw was 1.8km) which is not far from the finish line, but I didn’t know whether the course designed had added on an extra loop at the end so I didn’t assume we were close to the finish. But when I came back into the carpark and saw the volunteer with the foam hands again, I knew we had to be near the end – and miraculously we hadn’t had any more hills! The last kilometre or so I’d been trying to follow Troy while occasionally taking a sneaky look back and not seeing anyone, so I thought there was no way Emily was going to catch me now (unless there was a big arse hill right near the end). As it turned out there was a slight hill near the end but a short and runnable one and I managed to hold off Emily who must have finished quite strongly as she was only 15 seconds behind me!

My time was 44:47.58 – having never run this particular course before I had no idea what to expect but I was pretty happy with how it all went. And most importantly, I enjoyed every minute – yes, even those damn hills!

As always it was great to be able to catch up with some fellow runners I haven’t seen in a while (most since the last race at Anstey Hill and some since long before that!) and have a coffee from Neil at Stir.

All in all another fantastic event, thanks to Adelaide Trail Runners and all the fabulous volunteers!

See you at Onkaparinga in February!

I don’t think there is anything I can say about the shit show that has been 2020, that hasn’t already been said – a year like no other, unprecedented, blah blah blah!

However I did feel like it would be nice to farewell the aforementioned shit show with a ‘year in review’ of sorts as well as a bit of a look forward to 2021.

Personally 2020 started with a return to running in January after 4 months (seems so long ago now!) – here is a screenshot of my first run for the year – albeit a 1 min run/4 min walk scenario. That’s right, I ran for a whopping 4 minutes! And man, was it good! Running was initially every second day but then I changed to 3 times a week so I could have regular ‘running days’.

Things slowly progressed from there…

In early February I incorporated my 20 min run/walk into a parkrun for the first time (and as it turned out, first of not very many times before parkrun shut down for 40 weeks!) – after I’d finished my 20 mins I just walked the rest of it. Around the same time I ventured from the oval to the street and then back to the ‘scene of the crime’ aka the Uni Loop.

Later in the month I graduated to 30 mins of 2 min run/3 min walk and managed a couple of sub 30 minute parkruns before the shutdown in March.

Other than the couple of parkruns I managed to get in, most of my running up until June was on my own – partly because it was such short distances that it wasn’t worth trying to get anyone else to join me, and partly because the running groups also shut down in March. I doubt I would have been running with them anyway until I got to the point where I could run for close to an hour. Once parkrun went on hiatus, I would go out and do a ‘notparkrun’ every week (basically just a 5km run, anywhere, anytime) with Mum, but that would really be my only social running. It was probably a good thing as I can definitely say that during that period I was running at my own pace.

Late March I was allowed to run for 30 minutes nonstop – back on the oval again, running in the dark in the early morning to avoid crowds (but often failing to avoid sprinklers!) Over the ensuing weeks my distance increased in that 30 minutes as I got used to the idea of ‘proper’ running again!

April saw one of my 3 runs increase to 45 minutes, then in May it was 2 x 45 minute and 1 x 30 minute run. Once I hit 45 minutes I started venturing further afield as I have never enjoyed running in my area. I did a lot of early mornings on the Lochiel parkrun course – in the dark with my head torch, it was glorious!

From memory I think the next milestone was 1 x 1 hour run per week (1 hour seemed like such a long time!), soon progressing to 2 x 1 hour (still with the one shorter run) and I alternated Lochiel parkrun course with the uni loop. The uni loop kind of sucks!

The programme also incorporated some ‘drop down’ weeks which I have now forgotten about (I’ll get back to it in the new year!) – so every 4^th week I’d back off the distance.

June 21 was a milestone of sorts, my running group had an unofficial Winter Solstice Run (10km or 21.1km) and I did the 10km – first group run in a really long time! From there things quickly got back to normal as the following week, the running groups that had been on hold due to COVID, started up again. So Tuesdays and Thursdays were back to normal programming and I’d do my ‘notparkrun and a bit’ on the weekend.

From there I decided I wanted to run a half marathon before the end of the year, which I eventually did in November after City-Bay was cancelled, and after that I thought the Summer Trail Series would be a good way to end the year and kick off 2021.

Every year I like to illustrate my running mileage in map form – this year is nowhere near as impressive as previous years but I’m pretty happy with it considering I started halfway through January with less than 8km per week. I ended up with 1393km which gets me to Gosford. That’s an average of a bit over 26km per week. I’ll take it!

I’ll keep my 2021 running goals brief – for the first half of the year I’d like to work on getting my parkrun time back down (sub 22 minutes is the initial goal, ultimately I’d love to go sub 20 but I’m not sure how realistic that is!) and then in the second half I’d like to do a marathon (probably Melbourne). I’ll try not to fall into my regular habit of entering events like they’re going out of fashion, and being attracted by shiny things (ie medals).

So that’s running covered.

2020 was also the year I had more time to think about sustainability and environmental stuff – that really came to the fore when dining/coffee all turned to takeaway – think plastic containers and those dreaded takeaway coffee cups. I quickly found the places that used compostable cups and food packaging and that was definitely a big factor in deciding which businesses to support! Moving from an office with a decent coffee machine in the kitchen to one that had the choice of a pod machine (ugh!), instant coffee (not a chance) or an excellent café downstairs – I’ve never been a daily coffee buyer but it seems like I am prepared to pay more for things if they are more eco friendly. Especially this year.

Towards the end of last year I decided to only put out my landfill (red) and recycling (yellow) bins when they were full – having converted to compostable kitty litter, all the potentially smelly stuff now goes in the green bin which I put out fortnightly. My red bin went out once this year (only slightly less often than I did!) and that was only because of an old wedding dress that my cats had used as a makeshift litter tray – that was back in May. Recycling I put out 5 times this year but most of that was due to my 2 new drum kits and drum amp which I purchased throughout the year. More on that later!

I did try for the most part to avoid social media especially Facebook, I find I now have so much more time on my hands and I had found a lot of the drama on there very draining, however I have joined several groups which have helped me on the sustainability path (although I do feel like many of the people in those groups are doing it so much better than me – ah well, baby steps, right?) – I joined the Refuse Reduce Reuse Recycle group which is an abundance of knowledge, any question I have had about what can be recycled and how, has been very quickly answered – one of the good aspects of the dreaded socials! More recently I discovered the Buy Nothing Project and my local group, basically it is a local neighbourhood group where, among other things, you can ask for things you need (to keep or even just to borrow), and give away things you don’t need, and I have been amazed at the type of stuff I have found ‘takers’ for that I would have been sure was destined for the red bin! It’s always worth putting things out there even if you think no-one will take it! (Note to people with hoarding tendencies – perhaps this group is not for you – so much free stuff!)

2020 was the year of going nowhere – I literally have not spent a night away from home this year! I think I was going a bit stir crazy towards the end of the year so I definitely plan to do a bit of travel next year. To start with, I’ll probably stay within the state (to avoid the risk of getting stuck interstate if there is an outbreak somewhere!) and maybe later in the year I might venture outside of SA. Definitely by October for the Melbourne Marathon!

2020 was also a year for getting stuck into music – as you may or may not be aware I bought a secondhand electronic drumkit in March, a week later decided to upgrade to a new entry-level kit and then in November I upgraded again to a very nice mesh head Roland kit which I think will last me quite a bit longer than the first two! Since I got the first kit I have been practising every day, maybe in the new year I might get some proper lessons! I also have been playing my piano and guitars more and everything is all set up nicely in my lounge room. (I think the acoustic drumkit will have to wait until I get a bigger place with a soundproof room or better yet, a shed that I can convert into a music space!

I also decided to buy a record player and start collecting vinyl records – bit late to the party I know but that’s pretty standard for me!

Finishing up the music part, early this year I got to see a few awesome gigs – Alice Cooper at the Entertainment Centre, the mighty Queen + Adam Lambert at the Adelaide Oval and a very weird night seeing The Darkness at The Gov in March, literally the night before everything stopped! Awesome gig but a very strange vibe given that we all knew things were going to be VERY different from the next day! I have a ticket to see Guns N’ Roses in November – not convinced that will happen but I sincerely hope I get to see SOME live gigs this year! (And hopefully we are allowed to dance!)

Speaking of being late to the party I have watched a number of TV series that I only ‘discovered’ late last year and this year – I originally signed up for Amazon Prime as a free trial to get free shipping and also to watch ‘The Test’ documentary series – but I soon worked out that $6.95 a month is money well spent, especially this year! Between my growing DVD collection and the aforementioned Amazon, I have watched all of The Office (US – the UK version is on my watchlist) and Arrested Development (well the first 4 seasons anyway), most of Parks and Rec and well into The Sopranos and 30 Rock. Nothing recent in that list but some really good quality viewing!

So my non-running goals for 2021 (I won’t use the term ‘resolution’) – first and foremost, to go somewhere (anywhere!), to start a vinyl collection, to continue to declutter and contribute as little as possible to landfill, to get good at drums, to do more reading (I’ll have to come up with some kind of quantifiable goal around that because otherwise it won’t happen), to expand my cooking repertoire (easy, vegan and bulk cookable/freezable – any ideas please let me know!) and to listen to some educational podcasts to broaden my mind (suggestions welcomed by the way! So far I have been listening to mostly comedy which is great but I want something a bit more thinky too!)

And that’s it from me for 2020 – hope everyone has a happy New Year and I’ll see you all on the other side! 😊

I last ran this event (then organised by Yumigo which then became Ultra Runners SA) in 2017 after first running it in 2015 when, sucker that I was at the time, opted to go with the long course. The latter time was my first time running in the Summer Trail Series. I have run it somewhat inconsistently since then, and have never managed to run the full 4 races in one series (3/4 was my best effort).

This time around the Summer Series has been taken over by a new player in the Adelaide running scene, Adelaide Trail Runners. I believe this was their very first event!

This season I have entered the full series for the second time and hopefully this time I will run all 4 races! (Last time I entered the full series, I totally forgot about it until I received the race briefing email, at which point I was already committed on the day of Race 1, hence the reason I didn’t run all 4 events!)

Like last time, I decided to do the short course. Mainly because I have done 3 trail runs in total since Mount Crawford in September 2019 (after breaking down quite spectacularly a week after that!).

The day before the event, finally after 40 weeks, parkrun returned to South Australia after its enforced COVID hiatus (delayed by 2 weeks by pizza boy and subsequent statewide lockdown). Knowing that Anstey Hill was on the next day, I (sensibly) decided to run with Mum, as I have been doing pretty much every week since parkrun went on break in March. I am quite certain that I would not have been able to contain my enthusiasm had I run on my own, and despite telling myself I would take it nice and easy and save my legs, I know me better than that!

After parkrun I caught up with one of the event team, Mal, who was also doing the short course (although he did use the ‘O’ word – ‘ONLY’…)

There was no special preparation for this particular event – it was ‘only’ 8.6km so there was no need for carb loading or whatever. The short course was the latest to start (long started at 7, medium at 7:30 and short at 8) – there’s another excellent reason to choose the short course – a sleep in!

Gear wise it was all the usual stuff – compression shorts, calf sleeves, black socks and trail shoes (black is generally a good base colour for trails, although it was pretty dry and not much mud!) with the old favourite pink tank top which I’d used for my first 2 marathons as well as the last 2 events I have run in – not sure what I’ll do when that finally falls apart! I took my arm warmers in my race vest just in case but it wasn’t too cold so I was confident I wouldn’t need them! I also wore padded gloves as protection in the unlikely event of a fall. Given the COVID regulations, there were no cups at the drink stations (that is probably more of an environmental consideration, which I applaud!) and runners were not allowed to fill their own cups or bottles – I figured that would add more time than a ‘normal’ drink stop, so I decided not to bother with drink stations, just running with my small race vest, with one small bottle of water and one of Gatorade (which I didn’t end up drinking until after the race). Plus, realistically I was going to be done inside an hour, and I often run for an hour without any drinks on cooler mornings.

I got there earlier than I probably needed to, given that I was not sure about the parking situation – the race briefing had very helpfully outlined all the parking options, but being the latest starting group, I wasn’t sure how far away I would need to park. I didn’t want to park in the recreation park itself as it might be a bit slow getting out! I ended up getting a park easily about 5 minutes walk from the start line. I made it in time to see my regular running buddies who were doing the medium course, and it was great to see a whole lot of people I hadn’t seen for ages, some more than a year! With many of them doing the whole series, it is nice to know it won’t be that long before I see them again!

As is traditional, I didn’t look at the course map, given that I don’t know the area well at all, so it probably wouldn’t help me that much! Also I usually prefer not to know what is coming, especially in terms of elevation! I was assured that it was very well marked and it would be difficult to get lost – my only danger would be blindly following the person in front of me, who may very well be doing a different distance (or even just a random out for a Sunday run!)

There were 2 waves for each distance, 5 minutes apart. The ‘super fast’ wave went first, followed by the ‘very fast’ wave. I’m pretty sure super fast was meant to be the faster of the two! I figured I’d be somewhere in the middle, so I had planned to go towards the front of the second wave, until I saw Amelie who asked me why I wasn’t in the first wave. Seeing that there weren’t too many people lined up for the ‘super fast’ wave, and the idea was for about half of the 100-ish runners to go in each wave, I decided to join the back of that group. Which was an excellent choice, because I realised that if I’d gone with my original plan, I would be LEADING that second wave and therefore everyone would be following ME!

As always I think I went out too fast (you’d think I would have learned by now, but no!) although the start was relatively downhill. Then we hit the uphills. As I said earlier, I haven’t done a whole lot of trail running recently. The 3 runs I’ve done in the past year and a bit have all been around the Chambers Gully region, and I have walked the steep uphills. Previously, I probably ran the hills here at Ansteys (presumably I wrote about it in my previous blogs but I can’t be bothered re-reading them – ain’t nobody got time for that!) but after a little bit of running uphill, I started to see people walking so I naturally decided to copy them (sheep that I am!). Trouble was, the hills were LONG (about 200m elevation in 3km) and I didn’t especially want to be walking for 3km in an 8.6km race! Not that I was ‘racing’ as such but I still wanted to go as fast as I could! So I went back to an old strategy I remembered from way back, run a bit and walk a bit. And by ‘a bit’ I mean a really small bit – 20 steps walk, 20 steps run. I found that really manageable, and I am certain that it was faster than if I’d walked the whole thing (naturally!) and also faster than if I’d attempted to run the whole thing (mountain goat that I am NOT!!!) I must try to remember that for next time!

After the uphill bit, it was mostly downhill which was a joy! Some slightly technical rocky downhills, but not much congestion which was good – I didn’t want to hold anyone up that was behind me, but by the same token I did not want to step aside and let people past (if I’d been walking I would have, but not while running)! The fast runners should have been well ahead of me by the time we hit any of these sections, anyway.

It was nice to intersect with some of the long course runners, who I hadn’t seen at the start (because they’d started long before I got there!) I ran with Matt for a while, who I hadn’t seen in ages but still had the trademark bright shorts so when he inevitably went off ahead of me, I had someone that I could easily follow!

Approaching the end, and very much enjoying the downhillness, and knowing that there wasn’t much longer to go, I saw volunteer Justin and asked him “is it all downhill from here?” to which he replied in the affirmative!

It was lucky I wasn’t following Matt too closely towards the end, as I later found out that the long course runners had to do an extra loop before the finish. Me, on the other hand, just had to cross the carpark and run straight across the grass to the finish line! (The finish line was not as easy to spot as it might have been – the traditional finishing arch had not been put up due to high winds – a good move, I have seen what happens to finish arches under these conditions!)

After crossing the line, I checked my watch (8.7km in 48:09 – official time was 2 seconds faster) – pretty happy with that considering my lack of recent trail running – I really had no clue what kind of time or pace I would do but I figured that was about as good as I could expect!

The very first thing I did was make a beeline for the Stir coffee van to get myself a long black (I had spoken briefly with Neil when I arrived, and told him I’d see him very soon!) – there’s nothing quite like a post-run coffee!

I chatted with Zorica and Riesje who finished the medium distance not long after me, while waiting for the rest of my crew as Kate had organised post-run brekky at a local venue! I finished just before 9 and they were expecting to run about 2 hours, but Beck and Kate finished not too long after me! The rest of the group were not too far behind, and once everyone had finished, we left for brekky as we were getting a bit cold.

As a bit of a postscript, while at brekky waiting for my peanut butter toast (not a whole lot of vegan options!) I thought I’d check to see how I fared in my age group (the always competitive F40-44) I was surprised to see I was 1st in my category, and even more surprised to see I was 2nd female overall! I thought maybe it was a mistake and maybe someone had changed distances and it hadn’t been updated in the system yet (I was sure there were a lot of fast females ahead of me at the start line) but it appears that the result was correct, as evidenced by a message from Linna later in the day advising I was indeed 2nd and she had collected my medal for me!

Congrats to Brett of Adelaide Trail Runners for an outstanding first event – ideal weather (the rain held off ALMOST long enough for me to get back to my car) and a downhill finish certainly helped! Thanks as always to all the fab volunteers (including one dressed up as a Christmas tree… because, why not?)

And of course to Neil of Stir for the coffee – because if there’s no coffee, did we even run?

See you at Cleland in January for Race 2 – to kick off a year that has GOT to be better than this one!

After an extensive break between my last two events, it’s only been a 2 week break this time! Entering this event was a no-brainer (after I got the physio’s OK!) as the former Henley Classic (now the Glenelg Classic) was my first ever fun run, 8 whole years ago! I try to do it every year where possible. There is a 5km and 10km option, and I always go with the 5km as that was what I did 8 years ago and it’s nice to sort of be able to compare each year.

My first Henley Classic was in 2012 (signed up a week before the event, and at the time I wasn’t a runner so I had to become one very quickly!) where I ran a very respectable 26:29 (I don’t think I had a goal time in mind – I don’t think I would even have known what a good 5k time was at that stage!). 12 months later I returned, and predictably improved significantly on that time, running it in 23:09. That was the last time I ran it at Henley, as the following year I was interstate and the year after that it was cancelled due to works in the area and subsequently moved to Glenelg.

I’d only run the Glenelg Classic twice before, in 2016 (PB of 22:24 and a bonus 3rd place!) and 2017 (22:33 and 4th after going out way too fast – if only I’d re-read THAT report before this year’s run!)

In 2018 I was in Hobart tackling the Point to Pinnacle, and let’s not mention 2019!

The course had changed from my last time running it – previously the start/finish was at Glenelg North but this time it was in the heart of Glenelg, starting and finishing at Wigley Reserve. I allowed extra time to get there, given that it is a more popular spot and I thought parking may be an issue, but fortunately I was able to get a street park very close.

With social distancing being a thing, we were discouraged from arriving early and hanging around afterwards, so I made a quick portaloo stop (you know the permanent facilities are pretty rank when the portaloo is the better option – actually they were very fancy portaloos, with mirrors and everything!) and then went for a quick warmup run along the foreshore. It was already getting quite busy (it would only have been about 7:15am by this stage) so I expected the route to be quite congested by the time we started running about half an hour later!

This was the first SARRC event I’d done since COVID (and indeed since Barossa Marathon Festival in September last year) so the ‘trickle start’ was new to me but did seem to work very well. The only issue I could see was that if you were a podium contender it would be hard to know who was ‘ahead’ of you and who was ‘behind’ you, as we were in 3 chutes, setting off at 10 second intervals, and the timing started from when you crossed the mat. This was not an issue for me, fortunately! (We had had to indicate an estimated time at registration to aid with the wave starts – I forget exactly what I put down but I think it was about 22:40 which at the time I thought was pretty ambitious but hopefully not too far off the mark)

The numbers were pretty impressive given the current (COVID) climate and the forecast maximum of 37 degrees (admittedly most people would have entered before they knew that). 322 were registered for the 10km of whom there were 277 finishers, and in the 5km there were 172 registered and 163 finishers (I guess the weather was less of a factor for the 5km which started earlier and hopefully would be over relatively quickly!)

The course was well marked and marshalled, so there was never any danger of making a wrong turn. The timing of the 5k and 10k start was perfect as we got to see the 10km runners heading out as we were on our way back but the course was never congested that I saw (randoms with dogs aside, of course!)

Early on I heard someone cheering for me, I couldn’t see who it was so I said “I have no idea who that is but thanks!!” – turned out to be regular running buddies Kate and Beck (also the aforementioned physio – good thing she gave me the all clear to run – might have been a bit awkward otherwise!)

I only took advantage of one drink station, just past the halfway mark, just a quick grab, gulp and go! Ordinarily I wouldn’t drink in a 5k and I probably would have been fine without it, but it was very much appreciated! As far as I could tell there was plenty of water out on course especially given the weather.

On the way out I was running on the right side of the path for a bit, people behind me were probably wondering why, but there was method in my madness – I was trying to get one of the sprinklers to go on me! Eventually I succeeded, and moved back to the left, where there was a group of RMA runners cheering us all on.

After what seemed like an eternity I reached the turnaround (Lachy was the turnaround marshal who commented that he was looking forward to my race report – which was the furthest thing from my mind at that stage!) and the aforementioned drink station. Not long after that, it started to rain very lightly which was very welcome relief but unfortunately it was very short-lived. As I passed the RMA group again, Michelle said she had ordered the rain for me!

Now there was not a lot of elevation in this course as it turns out (according to the source of all knowledge, Strava, it was only 11m) but on the way out there seemed to be some very steep hills! Maybe it was because I had gone out too fast. (Had I learned nothing from 2017? Apparently!) Maybe it’s time to start using pace alerts again!

My splits were:

1. 4:21
2. 4:23
3. 4:45
4. 4:45
5. 4:34

The last kilometre seemed to go for an eternity especially when we got back to the reserve and the finish line was right there but we had to run a lap around the reserve to get to it! Seems a bit unfair if you ask me!

I’m not sure exactly what the MC was saying as I was approaching the finish line, I heard my name and I think something like ‘hotly contested’ which I took to mean there was someone breathing down my neck so I did a bit of a sprint finish which probably makes my last km look a bit more respectable! My official time was 22:57 which I later found out put me in 4th out of the females (eerily similar to the last time I’d run this event – albeit slightly slower and definitely way hotter!) so I was pretty happy with that.

The medals were really nice too!

After having a couple of waters and an apple to rehydrate and refuel, I went back to my car where I had a message from Beck to say she and Kate were nearby at Henley if I wanted to join them. I found them in the water by the jetty and it seemed very appropriate that I would end up there given that that was where my first running event had been held!

Thanks to all the fantastic volunteers who were out there on a hot morning (again, they had probably signed up to volunteer before they knew how hot it was going to be, but were still there with smiles for all) and congratulations to the organisers for putting on a great event in challenging circumstances!

Next year I hope to pace it more evenly – I blame COVID and the lack of parkruns since March for my inability to evenly pace a 5k – at the time of writing we were due to have our parkruns back this coming weekend but that has now been put on hold due to the recent cluster – fingers crossed it won’t be too long before I’m back running 5k’s every week!

Oh and this is completely unrelated but here is my new drum kit – I am sure we are going to be very happy together for a very long time! (And the cats are super excited about their new temporary playground!)

Hi, my name is Jane and I am a runner (in case anyone has forgotten…)

It has been approximately 420 days since my last race report (Mt Crawford Challenge 2019) and 413 days since my last event (City-Bay half marathon 2019 which was so disastrous it did not even warrant a race report – actually I’ll give you one now. Ran-limped the first 1km and walk-limped the last 20.1km then got a pretty sweet medal and didn’t run again for about 4 months)

As I said in my last post, I started this blog as a way to share my race reports so it has been a bit challenging to find remotely interesting stuff to write about in between my summer of slothdom and the year of COVID-19!

So it is with great pleasure that I give you my latest race report – from today’s Murray Bridge Marathon Festival!

(NB: Apologies for the lack of photos but I was so excited to actually be able to write about something other than my progress on the drums and the antics of my cats, I wanted to share this with you all ASAP and the official pics are not yet done. I may add race photos later as they come out!)

This was the second running of the MBMF and my first time. Last year’s event was in June which would have been vastly different conditions to this year’s event (presumably postponed due to the aforementioned ‘C-word’). I’m told, by those who were there, that it was pretty chilly, both at the start and standing around at the finish. This year the forecast was for a 26 degree maximum, which is a bit warmer than most of us are comfortable running long distances in, although the 8 degree overnight minimum would make for relatively pleasant running conditions at least in the early part of the race.

I didn’t know much about the course – I usually prefer not to study the course beforehand unless there is a danger of getting lost. All I knew was that there was a little bit of elevation and an uphill bit right near the start. There was a full marathon, half (which I was doing), 10k, 5k and 3k. They started at 5 minute intervals, longest distance to shortest. The marathon course was 2 laps of the half marathon course. I’m always happy to be doing the half marathon on these types of courses!

I had only entered relatively late, my initial plan being to run the City-Bay half (scheduled a week from today) to atone for last year, and MBMF being my back-up if, as I suspected may happen (and eventually did happen), the City-Bay was cancelled. As soon as I heard that C2B was officially off, I was straight onto my phone to register for MBMF – with COVID and social distancing etc, I thought they would probably have a cap on numbers and also that a lot of other people would have had the same idea as me, to enter MBMF as soon as they knew C2B was cancelled.

The numbers were pretty impressive – 6 days out they had 370 registered entrants. (I think maybe they had 200 last year?) I’m sure the lack of events in 2020 due to COVID had a lot to do with that! I know a lot of people had come back for more after enjoying the event in 2019.

Looking at the actual numbers on the day (because I like numbers!) we had:

• Marathon: 46 finishers
• Half marathon: 97 finishers
• 10k: 98 finishers
• 5k: 92 finishers
• 3k: 12 finishers

Going back now, once I started running again and running 10-12k pretty consistently, I decided that before the end of the year I was going to run a half marathon. I had 3 earmarked in November – MBMF, C2B, and also the Great Southern Half which I had done last year. That was my 3rd choice for several reasons – one, that I had done it before, and two, being late in November it could be potentially quite hot. MBMF for me was a guaranteed PB which was a big attraction for me!

Prior to running an official half I wanted to run the distance, just so I knew I could, but also so if anything happened and I was not able to run an official half this year, I could at least say I had run the distance. That worked out to be 2 weeks ago. I opted to run along the River Torrens which, for those who don’t know, is a VERY popular running route in Adelaide (3 of Adelaide’s biggest parkruns – by the way I’m super excited that we’re getting our parkruns back in 3 weeks – but I digress!) and is a great way to get a long run in without having to cross any roads or stop for traffic! (You just have to watch out for bell-less bikes and disobedient doggos!) I chose to run ‘up’ the river, towards the hills, because I knew I could get an uninterrupted 10.55km without crossing the river, plus it would be uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back – perfect for a negative split!

I had in my mind that I wanted to aim for sub 1:50 for my half – which would have been somewhat easier had it been City-Bay which is a very fast and flat course and often with the aid of a tailwind (although, if the second half is aided by the wind, the first half would be running into it…) I had done one river run a few weeks before that, where I had set myself to run exactly 1:50 and the distance I ran was 20.7km (most of my running friends probably would have gone the extra 400m and made it a half marathon but I was determined to stick with the plan, which has served me very well so far. (Right from the start, my physio Beck has set my programme by time, not distance – I recall back in late January it was 20 minutes of 1 min run/4 min walk every second day, gradually progressing up to 1 hour 3 times a week, and then I was able to start increasing one of those runs by 5-10 minutes each week.

This particular day I was due to run 2 hours, but given that I’d ALMOST completed a half in 1:50, I figured for once I’d go by distance and just run a half distance, which presumably would take less than 2 hours. After all, I wasn’t going to run any further than a half anytime soon, so what would be the point in running further than that in a training run now?

In the second half of the training run I decided that my 1:50 half marathon goal might not be all that realistic, and I should probably be happy with anything in the low 1:50s. I hadn’t factored in the fact that the second half of that training run was net downhill, and when I closed in on 21km I realised that it was possible to go under 1:50 but only if I sprinted the last 100m or so. I just snuck in (Strava says 1:49:58, and my last 100m was at 4:15 min/km pace) so I was pretty happy with that, and if I wasn’t able to replicate that at MBMF, at least I could say I ran a sub 1:50 half this year.

In the week leading up to MBMF, I did a lovely 2hr trail run with my old buddies Beck and Kate (definitely keen for more trails now I’ve ticked off my half for the year!), then did my usual Tuesday and Thursday runs.

I tempted fate and collected my bib on Thursday night at a special event held at the Nike store in Adelaide – then proceeded it to leave it in my car until Sunday, so paranoid was I that I would leave it at home!

I’d allowed myself about an hour to get there – knowing it would be closer to 50 minutes – that would get me there at least 30 mins before the start with plenty of time to wish the marathoners luck and stand in line for the toilets as per usual at these types of events (which amazingly didn’t happen – I walked straight in! Winning!)

It was pretty chilly at the start which I believe is not unusual for this part of the world (in recent times I’d only been to Murray Bridge once, and that was for a parkrun (of course!) 4 years ago which I remember most for one of the longest ‘post-parkrun coffees’ I’ve ever had!) I had a tank top and skirt, calf sleeves (which I tend to use for all long runs these days) and my awesome new Lightfeet socks which I’d won as a result of having completed the 4 ‘Women’s Run In The Park’ events his year. I had arm warmers and gloves also – my hands were numb when I got to the start line – but I was fortunately able to take the gloves off 5 minutes before we started, as I would not have wanted to be carrying them once I got started!

I’d decided to wear my small race vest with 2 x 250mL bottles of Gatorade to minimise the need to stop at drink stations, which meant I really could ditch the gloves at the last minute and stash them in my pack. The arm warmers were not really required from a warmth point of view but they did come in really handy for wiping away snot and sweat later in the race (I do paint a pretty picture, don’t I?) I didn’t have any issues with the vest – I’d packed the bare minimum (I’d cleared out the snake bandage which I always carry on trail runs – hopefully I wouldn’t be needing that!) and hardly noticed I was wearing it. Plus it allowed me to carry my phone in case I needed it, without having to have it in my SPIbelt around my waist.

In my experience, there are 2 ways to run a half marathon (or marathon for that matter).

1. Go out conservatively, don’t try to keep up at the start, run your own race, conserve energy and finish strong – hopefully with a negative split and reeling in a few other runners in the closing stages
2. Go out hard and try to hang on.

I didn’t really have a plan as such but I was loosely hoping for option 1.

Now the first km is slightly downhill so what would normally be considered a bit too fast, was not actually that bad. My slowest km of all was the second one which had most of the elevation in it (the big spiky bit!) I was planning to sit on low 5:00 min/km pace at least for the first bit but it didn’t quite work out that way so I decided that probably today was the day for option 2. Why not, what did I have to lose? It was going to be a PB one way or the other, and I have been given pretty strict instructions to take it REALLY easy for the next 3-4 weeks (I heard that as 3 weeks) so there was no reason not to leave it all out there. Even if I crashed and burned in the second half, it really didn’t matter! Let’s just go for it!

The first river crossing came in the 3rd km, known as ‘The Murray Bridge’. It was pretty cool to be able to run across, as the sign said at the start of the bridge, the first road bridge across the lower Murray. And to be able to run on the road part of the bridge too, not the footpath bit, which we later encountered on the return crossing.

I know the course was quite scenic but I don’t think I really appreciated it as much as I should have, getting back into old habits of just concentrating on the running! There was quite a bit of gravel and a bit of dirt which made a nice contrast with the bitumen.

The first 10km I was running just behind a guy in a blue shirt, I did eventually pass him but for the first little bit he was setting a pace that I was very comfortable with, so I decided to just stay behind him (socially distanced of course!) I later found out that another guy Neil (who ended up finishing about a minute behind me, and with a PB no less, has been doing something very similar with me!)

EDIT: I found out after initially publishing this, that the guy in the blue shirt, Adam, had used me as a pacer after I passed him, and also got a PB! So that worked out well for both of us!

Being quite a small event compared with a lot of the others I have done, and with less marshal instructions to listen out for, a lot of the runners around me had taken the opportunity to run with headphones. I normally use music for my long runs (when I run solo, which I usually prefer to do) and occasionally podcasts for the really long stuff I used to do, to mix it up a bit! However generally in a road race I prefer not to, so I can take in the atmosphere and chat to fellow runners. I didn’t really get to do that much today, so I made sure I said ‘Good morning’ to a cow drinking at a trough very close to the road. That’s probably the first time I’ve done THAT in any of my half marathons (today was #25).

Given the imminent return of parkrun in South Australia (did I mention I’m a bit excited by that?) I decided to think of this half marathon as 4 and a bit parkruns. It’s also a handy way to break it down rather than listing all my 1km splits (which would be incredibly boring and also would make my pace look quite inconsistent which is generally is).

So here are my 4 ‘notparkrun’ splits:

1. 24:11
2. 24:17
3. 23:46
4. 24:44

Pretty happy with that, looks quite consistent when you break it down that way!

Just because I like numbers, I then worked out my first 10k and my second 10k and that makes me very happy:

1. 48:30
2. 48:28

Ignoring the last 1.1km which makes up a half marathon, that could almost be described as a negative split! Big smiley faces all round!

OK let’s get off the nerdy stats and back to the event. One moment that was equal parts frustration and relief, was when we crossed back over The Murray Bridge in the 16th kilometre, where we were ushered onto the pedestrian part of the bridge which was quite narrow. It brought back memories of trying to run across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco – although on that occasion pretty much all of the other path users were not only walkers but also tourists taking photos! At least today we were all running! Two runners in front of me moved aside to let me pass (I did not want to try to pass anyone on this narrow path – one of my running friends sustained a very nasty injury recently when someone passed her on a single track during a trail run causing her to lose concentration, and subsequently trip and fall) – thanks to those guys! Ahead there were 2 other runners, and ahead of them a woman who I was trying to keep in sight – I STILL don’t know which distance she was doing, she could well have been a marathoner! I knew I wasn’t going to get past these other 2 runners, and therefore the woman was getting a bit further away, however I think at this stage in the run it was a blessing, because it kind of forced me to back off the pace a bit, ensuring I had something left for the end! It was really the only part of the course that had any kind of congestion – despite at least the 10k/21.1k/42.2k sharing the same final part of the course, the staggered start and not too huge field made it a really comfortable and well spaced run!

As you can see my last ‘parkrun’ was my slowest which didn’t surprise me – the ‘bottleneck’ on the bridge was part of it but fatigue was no doubt a bigger factor! Also, by the last few k’s I knew that a) I probably wasn’t going to catch the woman in front, and there were no other women close behind me other than those I knew were in the 10k or 42.2k and b) I was not only assured of sub 1:50 barring absolute disaster, but I was probably going to go sub 1:45 which I had never even really considered as a possibility! So I was able to back off the pace a little bit and still know it was going to be a really good day!

Other than checking my pace every kilometre or so, and also checking to see how far I had to go (and I did check it every 100m or so in the last km!) I wasn’t looking at my overall pace too much but it seemed to sit on 4:50 for quite a while but I stopped looking at my overall time after about 1:30. So when I crossed the finish line (a sprint finish, just like my ‘training’ half 2 weeks earlier, even though I wasn’t really chasing or holding off anyone – I was literally just leaving it all out there!) and I heard 1:42:42 let’s just say I was pretty happy!

And just to express my love of numbers a bit more (I promise, this is the last one):

• Half marathons: 25
• Half marathons not as pacer: 18
• Half marathons faster than today: 4 (including one anomaly at the 2015 Masters Games which I doubt I will ever replicate!)

Today was my 5th fastest half – super duper happy with that!

It was pretty warm out there but not too bad by the time I finished. The marathoners, with another lap to do, would have got VERY warm! Another reason I was happy to have done the half!

As a bit of an eco nerd I was particularly impressed that the cups used in the event were all compostable as well as those served by the coffee van (the iced almond latte went down a treat, as did the can of Coke at the finish line – I’d forgotten how good a post-run Coke tastes!)

Congratulations to all the runners especially the marathoners and especially to regular running buddy Marjolijn (who probably won’t see this but still!) who did her first marathon in a pretty phenomenal time! Well done to Morgan and team for a superbly well organised event and a great course, and thanks as always to all the volunteers who made it all possible (although I didn’t utilise the drink stations myself, the course was very well supplied with them!).

I would definitely recommend this event, it has something for everyone and I would be keen to come back again!

And may I just conclude by saying IT’S GREAT TO BE BACK!!

I started this blog as a way to share my race reports which I always enjoy writing (and some of which have become bigger than Ben Hur!) but in the past year I haven’t had any races to write about, and I don’t want to post stuff just for the sake of posting stuff!

Hence, my posts over the last 12 months have been a bit sporadic and repetitive – sorry friends, thanks for hanging in there!

There is light at the end of the tunnel though! In a few weeks I finally get to write a race report!

And today I ran a half marathon – not an official one, just a training run, but still – 21.1km is 21.1km even when there’s no medal at the end of it!

AND last week I ticked over 1000km for the year – certainly nowhere near the mileage of previous years but still I’m pretty happy with that milestone!

See you in a few weeks!