Adelaide Marathon 2024 – what a day!
I’ve been involved with this event on and off since 2014.
In 2014 I went out to cheer on running buddies Brandy and Jim doing their first marathons, standing outside the Zoo wearing a tiger onesie and holding up a motivational sign which I still have in the boot of my car to this day!
2015 was my first experience of pacing, pacing 2 hours for the half marathon.
I then ran the marathon in 2016 with Beck, finishing for the first time on the Adelaide Oval.
Back to ‘official’ pacing in 2017, this time pacing 2:15 which was a bit more of a challenge!
The following year the marathon fell not long after I’d done a 100k race so I opted for the 1 hour pacer role in the 10k.
Then I went back to familiar territory in 2019, donning a silly costume and pacing the half marathon!
After a break of quite a few years, I ran for the first time ‘just for me’, doing the marathon last year and managing a big PB!
This year I thought I’d give the half marathon a crack, given that I would be doing the Sydney Marathon 3 weeks later. Barring disaster, it would be a guaranteed Adelaide half marathon PB!
I had been discussing the marathon with my Mum, whose birthday happened to fall on the day, and she said “I should do it!” and I replied “Yes you should!” and proceeded to sign her up for the 5k.
I had a pretty easy week in the leadup, switching my usual speed session for a ‘normal’ Tuesday run, and then a relatively cruisy Thursday run. I’d gone off caffeine after Monday morning.
On Tuesday I was running with Riesje who was also running the half and she asked me if I had a time in mind, and I’d been saying sub-1:40 as it’s not a super flat course, and she told me surely I’d be faster than that! So I changed my goal to sub 1:35, which seemed reasonable given that since I first broke 1:35 at Barossa last year, I’d done 6 half marathons (including Barossa), and all of them except the two Pichi Richi halves have been under 1:35.
The weather was looking a little dodgy, rain was forecast but hopefully would hold off until after the event. I put out a T-shirt and a singlet along with my shorts, and would decide on the morning which one to wear. I had my arm warmers ready, and I was wearing my Nike Vaporflys (I’d run 15km in them the previous week, to make sure they were still good for more than 5km – they’re looking a bit worse for wear but they’ve still got some life left in them!)
Saturday night I had the traditional pizza and wine – and for a change my cats didn’t try to grab the pizza out of my hands! (One of them sat on the box to try to stop me eating it, which was most unhelpful!)
I had arranged to go in with Mum as she was happy to get there super early (I was aiming for 0630 for a 0700 start, her race started at 0730) and was also happy to pay to park in the Adelaide Oval carpark which is a lot closer than where I would have parked as I HATE paying for parking if it is avoidable!
Sunday morning turned out to be surprisingly warm, so not only did I wear my singlet rather than my T-shirt, but I didn’t end up even needing my arm warmers at the start – I took my hoodie off about half an hour before the start and was ready to go!
Adelaide Oval was open so we were able to use the proper toilets which is always a huge plus – especially as there were minimal queues and PLENTY of toilet paper!
After having my energy drink and leaving my bag at the bag drop, I went for a 1.6km warmup before making my way to the start area. (Side note – there was an event on after the race called the Extra Mile, and money was raised for charity for each person who did it. I didn’t end up doing it, but I like to think I went the Extra Mile BEFORE, instead of after, the race!
I found my spot in the start area, I hadn’t realised before that there would be a 1:35 pacer – how perfect, I could just run with him and let him do all the work! It was the same guy, Terry, who had been the 2:30 pacer for the 30k at Hills to Henley.
Much the same as at Hills to Henley, I started with him but soon left him behind. My first indication that this may have been ill-advised, was when I looked at my watch after 1km and saw 4:09 (bearing in mind that 1:35 would be around 4:29 pace).
This was my 39th half marathon. I have been a pacer quite a few times but I don’t recall ever running WITH a pacer for more than brief moments. Even though there was a pacer running the EXACT pace I needed to run, somehow I thought I could just run on ahead and what could possibly go wrong? With experience comes – I don’t want to say arrogance, but some kind of ‘know-it-all-ery’ – you’d think by now I would have learned from past mistakes and yet here I was!
At the 9km mark the 1:35 pacing bus caught up with me and from then until about the 17km mark I was just hanging on to them! So I’d wasted all that energy for nothing – note to self, don’t do that again next time! (You know I will…)
It was great to see so many familiar faces out there. I didn’t see anywhere near as many people I expected to who were actually in the race (it was mainly just half marathoners and marathoners I encountered) but there were a lot of people I knew out there volunteering – special shout out to Tamas in his unicorn onesie blasting some loud heavy stuff in the Botanic Gardens!
There were quite a few other musical interludes, most notably the African group at the bottom of Morphett St bridge which made probably the least enjoyable part of the course a lot more enjoyable!
I don’t normally fuel during a half (I know, I should!) but I have been practising fuelling for the marathon so I thought I’d practise that in this race. So I had a protein ball every 6km. One of them (I think it was the 12km one) was slightly delayed as we were running past Elder Park at the time and I was almost certain they’d put a photographer there and I did NOT want a photo of me stuffing my face! I was right too – as soon as I’d gone past him, out came the snack!
Just before the photographer a guy called out from the sidelines “Stick with the plan”! I said “What plan?” Where was he at the 1km mark when I could have used that advice! It was too late now!
I remember when we got to 14km I said ‘just a parkrun and a bit to go’ and then I said that actually wasn’t very helpful as parkrun is never (for me anyway) an easy 5km!
I was telling Terry about how I thought I knew better than running with the pacer and it turned out that I didn’t, he suggested I should stick with him until about 5km from the end, then take off. I said that 5km was probably a bit ambitious and I really should stick with him until about the last 500m!
As it turns out, I ran with him from the time he caught me at 9km, until about 17km (so 4km to go – he was closer in his estimate than I was!)
(I tried to find him at the end to thank him but couldn’t see him – with the giant flag attached to his back he should have been easy to spot but if I were him I probably would have ditched it as soon as I crossed the finish line!)
I found him really helpful as a pacer, better than I ever was! He would tell us all the pace at each kilometre marker, and he let us know when drink stations were coming up (and on which side) and when people should be thinking about taking their gels.
I planned to get water at every drink station, and I just missed out on one, which was probably around 16-17km and was the only one I recall being on the right side – being left handed I couldn’t quite coordinate grabbing the cup in my right hand, and at that stage the drink station volunteers were run off their feet and there were only a few cups out on the table, and I did not want to slow down, so I missed out on that one! (I guess this is one example of where left-handers have an advantage – I had no issues with any other drink stations other than that one!)
The paper cups were good too – grab the cup, bend it to make a spout, get most of the water in the cup, crush it and drop it in the bin – I think I managed to successfully get ALL my cups in the bin this time – I reckon that’s a PB for me!
My average pace for that last 4km (excluding that pesky last 0.1km) was just under 4:34, but I had banked enough time that I potentially could still make my sub-1:35 goal – it was going to be a near thing though!
To finish, we had to run past the finish line (brutal!) then do a short out and back before coming back on the path around the Adelaide Oval.
I was momentarily confused by a sign with an arrow pointing towards the right that said ‘Finish’ but then I saw it said something about the ‘Extra Mile’ and decided instead to follow the runners in front of me going left, who looked like they were heading towards the finish line.
Coming into War Memorial Drive, with the finishing arch directly in front of me, I looked at my watch and I was just over 1:34 – it seemed REALLY far away and I thought, time for a sprint finish!
And so I went, for what seemed like forever, checking my watch about 3 times along the way, crossing the line with my watch reading 1:34:54 (official time 1:34:52, and my gun time was 1:35:00:06!). Strava tells me my average pace for the last 200m was 3:37 (as compared with my overall average pace of 4:28)!
So it was nice to be able to pull out a sprint finish at the end of a half marathon but it was only due to poor decisions earlier that I actually NEEDED to do that!
The medal was really nice too, SARRC has definitely stepped up their game in recent years – I have a nice collection of Adelaide Marathon Festival medals and the more recent ones are up there with some of the best I’ve had!
I went and found Mum, she had had a good run, and as I went to get my bag from the bag drop I had a look at the 5k results and discovered that she had actually won her age category, which she had no idea about when I told her! That’s a pretty good birthday present! So of course we had to hang around for the presentations!
After that she dropped me home and I did the calculations and had a quick shower and change and jumped in the car to head back to the Oval to see Cecile finish her marathon, she was hoping for sub 4 hours (on her third attempt) and I worked out that if I could manage a close park, I would be able to get there in time! (My newish shorts ended up causing a little bit of chafing which I haven’t experienced before – time to invest in some Bodyglide!)
I managed to get a free park just up from the Oval and quickly made my way back to the finish area with my medal on (I confused a lot of people who wondered if I had actually run because I was in ‘normal’ clothes!) and found Michael, who had been following Cecile around the course on his bike, and he said she was not too far away – so I’d just made it!
I saw her come across the line in a few minutes under 4 hours – she was SO excited and we were all very happy for her, it was well deserved! She even also managed an age category placing (which we didn’t realise until we were at the pub several hours later)!
After she went home and the rest of her cheer squad made their way either home or directly to the pub where we were booked in for lunch, I waited to see a few other running buddies, Kristina and Lachy, finish, and then the timing was perfect to get to the pub. Even better because I got there JUST before it started to rain!
We were sitting inside having lunch when the rain properly came in – the runners/walkers would have all been finished by then but I suspect some of the volunteers would still have been out packing up! And the rain was pretty heavy too – we were all grateful it waited until later in the day!
All in all it was a fantastic day and yet another superbly organised event by SARRC! Thanks to all the organisers and fantastic volunteers (and musicians!) for making it such an awesome experience!
