Best make yourself a cup of tea… I think this is going to be a long one!
Sydney Marathon, despite being on the verge of becoming one of the World Majors, had never particularly interested me. Firstly because it is hilly and hills are not my friend (well, the uphills anyway – I don’t mind a bit of downhill!), and secondly because it always falls on the same day as Adelaide’s biggest running event, the City-Bay Fun Run. Having done the half marathon for probably the last time in 2023, my goal was to run sub-50 minutes for the 12k this year. It was also the 50th anniversary so I had entered as soon as entries opened – it was a no-brainer!
Then, somewhat inexplicably, I received an email advising that I had been invited to participate in the World Age Group Championships at the Sydney Marathon. I didn’t know much about the Age Group Championships but I had noticed people at Chicago (where the Championships were held last year) with age group bibs on their backs. I wasn’t particularly high in my age group but somehow I still got an invitation. I figured it was probably because the event was being held in Australia, and as an Australian, they thought I would be likely to attend.
I put the question out to Facebook. City-Bay for the 50th anniversary and a likely PB, or a probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run alongside some pretty elite runners? Of course almost EVERYONE told me to go to Sydney. There was an additional cost for Sydney though – from memory it was around $400 for the race entry plus a few functions and some additional perks – not to mention flights and accommodation. But I weighed up the options, and Sydney won out in the end – again, when would I ever get this opportunity again? City-Bay will still be there next year!
I did a 16 week training programme, loosely following the programme I used for my first 2 marathons way back in 2014 and 2015. This time around, I only used the programme to determine my long run distances. (I was running 5 times a week in 2014, and have since dropped to 4 times, but it does not seem to have had any negative impact on my performance)
During the 16 weeks I did 2 half marathons (Pichi Richi in June and Adelaide in August), and unlike 2014/2015, I would have a ‘drop down’ week the week before the event, so I could give the 21.1km a good crack. Consequently my overall distance covered in the training block was a bit less than what was programmed. (The programme had 444km over the 16 weeks of long runs, and what I actually did was 406km. Averaged out over 16 weeks, that’s actually not a lot). In terms of runs over 30km, my programme had me doing 4 with the longest being 36km, and I actually did 3, with the longest being 34km. Having done Pichi Richi Marathon in 2022 on the back of only one 30km run, I knew that this would be enough.
What I didn’t do was train for the hills. I knew I should, but I didn’t. I have been doing quite a lot of strength training and also speed training which I had only started doing at the start of the year after many years of NOT doing it, so hopefully that would make up for the glaring lack of hill training!
Taper week was pretty standard. I did my last long run of 20km the week before, breaking in my new shoes – immediately after attending a ‘come and try’ day at the Metropolitan Fire Service which included dragging a 70kg dummy and running with a fire hose, among other things. So I guess that was good preparation for ‘running on tired legs’? I forgot to do my usual caffeine detox (I actually only remembered when I went to order my post-parkrun coffee on the Saturday!) but otherwise I ran Tuesday and Thursday, with Tuesday being a hill run (because, better late than never?) and Thursday being a slightly shorter but quicker run. As is part of the regular routine, I had a pre-race massage on Thursday night.
I flew to Sydney on Friday morning. Friday was a bit hectic, after landing at the airport and taking 2 trains to get to my accommodation (Blues Point Hotel in McMahon’s Point, chosen because it was a 15 minute walk to the start line, and with the start being at 6am, that seemed like a good option!), I quickly dropped off my bags and headed back to the train to get to the expo to pick up my race pack.
And there I discovered one of the perks of being part of the Age Group Champs, we had our own dedicated check-in area and were able to jump the queue which I was very grateful for as I needed to be at the wharf at 4:30pm for the first event of the weekend, a sunset cruise!
I breezed through the expo, I didn’t really ‘need’ anything and it was probably for the best that I was in a rush!
While waiting in line to get on the boat, someone called out my name, it was Pirjo, who I had met in the hostel bar after the Chicago Marathon, and she was also part of the Age Group championships. Not knowing anyone else that was part of it, it was nice to see a familiar face! She introduced me to her friend Karen from Scotland, and also Sarah from England who they’d met on the flight over.
It was a lovely night for a cruise, albeit a bit cold up on the top deck by the end! I was glad I’d chosen the earlier cruise (with about 1800 people involved in the championships, there were 2 separate ‘sailings’) as we got to see the sunset.
I grabbed some Thai food from a place just down the road from my hotel, and headed back to my place. It is a pub but my room was very spacious and comfortable. Friday night was a bit noisy out on the street which I thought might not bode well for a good sleep on Saturday night, but the pub noise itself was not an issue. There was a small kitchenette with a fridge – enough space for me to put my energy drink and milk. (I had also brought a Coke for my drop bag to have after the race, but I found out from the briefing that we weren’t allowed cans in our drop bags – so that would have to wait till I got back to the hotel!)
Saturday morning I went on the new Metro for the first time – the Metro is a new fully automated train that runs way underground – the Sydenham line goes under Sydney Harbour which was a bit of a novelty! You know you’re going way underground when you descend the several very long escalators! It’s very new – I think this particular line only opened about a month ago. The stations are very modern and clean, as are the trains. The Metro was recommended as the best way to get to the start of the marathon at North Sydney, with Victoria Cross station being slightly closer to the North Sydney Oval than the North Sydney train station.
I got off at Gadigal Station and followed my Google Maps directions to Pirrama parkrun, a relatively new parkrun at Pyrmont (I had planned to do North Sydney but as it is so close to the marathon start, it had been cancelled for that day) and quickly found myself in a crowd with other people clearly heading the same way, including a couple from Emerald in central Queensland who happen to be the Event Directors for the parkrun there!
I met Voula from Adelaide there, she was initially going to do the marathon but due to injury she dropped to the 10k and then decided just to come and support other runners doing the marathon. I ended up running the parkrun with her, it was very congested (over 600 people, with a previous attendance record of around 400 – but they were definitely prepared for big numbers!) and I was glad I was not trying to run fast, as it would have been quite frustrating! It’s a 2 lap course, so even if you were well ahead, you’d hit the slower runners/walkers on the second lap. I saw Ross from Scotland, who I had met on the cruise, he was doing his 50th parkrun and definitely was not taking it easy! I also saw a fast guy from Toowoomba with a pram who I think I met at my local Lochiel parkrun a few weeks ago. Voula and I stopped for a selfie with the Harbour Bridge in the background! It was a really nice event and course, I think it would be nice to see what it’s like with fewer people, but it was a perfect option for a marathon weekend!
Amazingly the wait for coffee wasn’t very long, given the crowd! We both got a takeaway and walked back towards Voula’s accommodation, as I was heading to the Opera House for a group photo with the 1800 Age Group athletes. The Opera House steps were closed to the public so it was pretty special to be allowed on there! Trying to assemble the crowd for a photo was like herding cats, but eventually they managed to get us all in position and the photo turned out pretty well! I strategically put myself behind Pirjo who was holding a Finnish flag, so I might be able to see myself in the photo later – she ended up being in the very front row so that worked out well!
Following that I messaged my cousin who lives in Manly, to see if she might be free to catch up (I am so bad at planning ahead – last time I was in Sydney I think I messaged her the day before to see if she wanted to meet for lunch!) and fortunately she was, I did warn her I was still in my running gear as it made more sense to take the ferry straight from there to Manly than to have to go all the way back to my hotel for a shower first. I did end up spending quite a lot of the weekend commuting via various different modes of transport!
It was a lovely day to hang out near the beach for a few hours, and I had a nice healthy lunch, knowing that dinner was going to be my traditional pre-race pizza. And I ran into Pirjo and Karen not once but twice – not sure if they were stalking me or vice versa!
Eventually I got back to the hotel around 4pm, time for a shower and a bit of time to re-charge before taking the Metro once again to meet Ryan from Adelaide (who was also doing the marathon) for dinner at Macchiato. I had booked dinner for 5:30, and it was certainly good that I did, because when I arrived there was a queue to get in and we would have faced a lengthy wait for a table had we not booked. Seemed like a very popular place among runners! (I had actually been to this place once before, in 2015 when I came over for City2Surf!)
I had pizza and wine, and Ryan had pasta and wine. (He wasn’t going to have wine because he assumed I wouldn’t, but as soon as I said I was going to have one, he quickly joined me!) I saved 3 slices of pizza for my post-race recovery meal – assuming it didn’t walk from the fridge before I got back!
I was in bed probably by about 8:00, with my alarms set for 3:55, 4:00 and 4:05, with the plan being to leave at about 4:30 to walk to the start. The Age Group athletes had the privilege of a race-day bag drop (unlike everyone else, who had to drop their bags at the expo by Saturday), but that closed at 5:15, so I wanted to be there well before then.
As I’d been out most of the day and not drunk nearly enough water, I had been hydrating late in the day so I had to get up several times early in the night. Fortunately it was a quiet night in the pub and on the street so other than the early awakenings, I actually had a really good sleep! And as a bonus I woke up 5 minutes before my alarm!
After a quick breakfast of granola, I left the hotel around 4:25. It took me longer than I expected to get to the start area, partly because it was uphill, but also because it seemed like we did a full lap of North Sydney Oval before we finally got in. It was a separate ‘warm up’ area for the age groupers and the elites, which was nice as it was a little less hectic than I imagine the main start area would have been! My only complaint was not enough toilets – I didn’t see any portaloos, just the fixed toilets at the Oval, and with 100% off the people present wanting to use them all within a fairly short space of time, a few portaloos would not have gone astray! The bag drop was very well organised, there were different lines depending on bib numbers, and there was no queue to get to it (I had been told from people who had participated in the Age Group Championship at Chicago last year, that the bag drop was a mess, and all the bags just got chucked in together. With everyone using the same bags (supplied at check-in), it would be pretty hard to find yours afterwards if there was not some kind of order to it!
After bag drop, with the toilet queue being pretty long and not moving very quickly, it was time to move into our ‘pens’ to head to the start line. Each ‘pen’ had 2 age groups in it – I was in W45-49 and we also had the F50-54 group in with us. I had decided to try to start near the back, as I didn’t want to get dragged along . The automatic qualifying time for W45-49 was 3:13, and for W50-54 was 3:21. Given that most of the athletes there would have been time qualifiers, and given that my marathon PB was 3:26, I assumed most of the people in my pen would be faster than me. As I headed towards the back of the pen I saw Pirjo and Karen so it was nice to have people to chat with as we waited for the start!
Eventually we made our way from the oval to the start line on Miller St. Our official start time was 6:01, just behind the elites. (Looking at my ‘gun’ and ‘net’ times, I crossed the line 19 seconds after the gun.) Pirjo and Karen took off immediately and I didn’t think I’d see them again until after the finish.
My goal was around 3:30 but I wasn’t overly optimistic about that, given the hills, and the fact that it was quite windy. I had hoped to run with the 3:30 pacer at least for the first half, but it turned out that the age group wave didn’t have any pacers – they would be starting with the main waves, behind us. So, probably not particularly useful to me.
I hadn’t studied the course too much (why ruin the surprise?) but I had had a brief look at it the day before and noticed a section running down Anzac Parade and back that I thought probably wouldn’t be very pleasant (having lived in Sydney and worked in that area, I didn’t recall it being particularly scenic!) I also thought, the City-Bay which I would otherwise have been running, is primarily along Anzac Highway, so I guess it seemed appropriate that I would be running along a road called Anzac! There was also a lap around Centennial Park which looked quite big!
The most important parts of the course though, were the start and the finish. The finish was outside the Opera House, but more on that later!
The start was downhill – my first kilometre was 4:22 but in my defence it was 30m elevation loss in that first kilometre – the steepest descent for the whole marathon! Very soon after the start we hit the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, which had been closed to traffic for the event, so it was quite a privilege to be able to run along the centre of the road rather than the usual congested pedestrian path on the side! That was where I first saw the photographers. One mistake I made several times was smiling for a photographer and then getting back to business, forgetting that where there was one photographer there were usually 2 or 3, so the subsequent photos probably weren’t so great!
The drink stations were frequent and well stocked. I only wanted water, it took a few stops before I remembered to only grab the WHITE cups rather than the black ones. I think I managed to get water at every stop. The first few drink stations were on the left hand side, but after that they were mostly on the right which firstly took a bit of pre-planning to get across to the right in time, dodging other runners. Also grabbing a cup with my right hand took a bit of coordination! I MOSTLY got my empty cups into the bins – but on the few occasions that I didn’t, I blame the wind! It was WINDY!
As one of the not-so-fast age groupers, it was inevitable that I would be passed by many other runners along the way, including large groups around the pacers. I remembered not to try to stick with the pace groups, as even though they were coming from behind me, they were running a LOT faster than me! I only hoped that I wouldn’t see the 3:30 pace group, as that would mean I definitely was not going to make my time goal!
The volunteers out on course were great, there were so many of them! They were super encouraging, and many of them were holding motivational signs.
The support from the crowd was great too. I remembered thinking, as we headed towards the start line, “This FEELS like a major”, and the crowd support definitely added to that feeling! Lots of motivational signs (“You run better than the government” was one memorable one that is always relevant!) and at least one “Tap here for a power up” (I think I hit the same one twice).
It was hilly, and windy at times. I was able to run all the hills, although there were a few times towards the end where I seriously considered walking. The downhills were great though (what goes up must come down, right?)
At approximately every 5km there was a timing point. Although I had my watch covered by my arm warmer the whole time, I did take note of the time clocks when I saw them. I did not know at the time how far behind the gun I started, but if the time on the clock was under 5 minute/km pace, I knew I was on track for my goal 3:30 time. I had no idea where the hills were, and how steep they would be, so consequently I did not know if it was realistic to hold onto this pace, but I figured I’d just go for as long as I could. Time didn’t really matter that much but I had done a solid training block so it would be nice to get reward for my efforts! Plus, there was a bit of added pressure, being part of the age group championships – I just wanted to be not last in my age group, but I kind of wanted to justify being there!
At one point we ran along the water, I think that was at Pyrmont, actually along part of the parkrun course, and I was instantly taken back to Liverpool in 2014 where I did my first ever marathon, and the last 6km or so was along the waterfront and it seemed to go on FOREVER! (In Sydney, however, this section was FAR from the finish!)
There were a few out and back sections. Normally in a home race I can tell whether the people coming the other way are ahead of me or behind me, because I usually know a few people and I know if they’re faster or slower than me. I didn’t see anyone I knew, I was looking out for Pirjo and Karen but I didn’t see them, so I figured they were well ahead of me!
At one point in the latter stages I heard a familiar voice coming from behind me, it was Chantel from Adelaide, I didn’t know her very well, only from the times she has passed me in other races! She was also part of the age group championships and went on to finish a few minutes ahead of me.
Somewhere around this time I also nearly caught up with Pirjo, who was easy to spot in her Finnish flag top! Just before I caught her though, she must have put on a burst of speed and then she was gone!
There was one more big hill to climb before the end, and then we were well and truly into the home stretch. We ran down Macquarie St, and I was reminded of walking from parkrun the previous day, to the Opera House, which was a reasonably long walk. Somehow I had in my mind that I was on the same road and that once I turned the corner the Opera House would be still a fair way away. Imagine my surprise and delight when I went around the corner and the Opera House was Literally. Right. There!
Thanks to the lovely downhill finish, I had enough legs left to do a fast finish (4:23 pace for the last 400m – not quite as fast as my sprint finish at Adelaide a few weeks back) and I could see the time clock read 3:27 so I knew I had managed to achieve my goal time!
My official time was 3:27:38 which I was super happy with. I took a couple of selfies with my medal before the 500m ‘walk off’ to the recovery area (to avoid congestion at the finish line we had been instructed to keep moving). As if 42.2km wasn’t enough already! At the recovery zone (another perk of the Age Group Champs, we had our own dedicated recovery area) I collected my bonus medal and my drop bag, happy to get my shoes and socks off, and also to change into my finisher shirt! (I did see a few people running in the marathon wearing the 2024 finisher shirts, which we were given at check-in, but which superstition usually dictates you do NOT wear until you’ve actually FINISHED the race!)
I found my Scottish/Finnish crew and hung out in the recovery area for a while before we headed to the main recovery area which was actually better as there was more of a party vibe there, plus we could get drinks and I could finally get a post-race Coke! After hanging out there for a while longer, I headed back to Circular Quay to get a ferry back to my hotel for a shower and change, not to mention leftover pizza and another Coke!
I then went and met Voula and a few others at the Opera Bar for a couple of drinks before heading to the Ivy for the official Age Group post-race function, for a few more! A great way to finish an awesome weekend!
I would recommend this event to anyone thinking about doing it. The course, while a bit convoluted, takes in some of the most iconic parts of the city, and the crowd support is fantastic. The finish line atmosphere is great, and if they could have just taken out the hills (or maybe if I had actually trained for them), it would have been perfect!
THANKS to all the wonderful volunteers and organisers for putting on this fabulous event. Hopefully Sydney gets awarded Major status and continues to grow as an event! Not sure I’d do it again, but I’m really glad to have done it this year!