Some highlights of the year so far

Although I've had the pleasure of taking part in some great running events this year I've been far too slack to blog about them individually. So here are a few of the highlights...

April: Not the Canberra Marathon

The 2010 Canberra Marathon was cancelled due to an unresolved legal dispute over the ownership of the event. This was disappointing for those of us who had been looking forward to it, but not nearly so much as it was for CoolRunning Australia member LindyK who had was using the event as a fund-raiser for Parkinson's disease support. Lindy is both a former elite marathoner and a Parkinson's disease sufferer, and the date of the marathon, April 11, was World Parkinson's Day. Lindy and her sister Heather had been planning to walk the 50km ultra-marathon course.

Enter some other CoolRunning members, particularly SuperSam1979 and ChrisG, with a very simple idea: let's run it anyway ! And thanks to the wonderful collective enthusiasm of about 30 runners, plus their families and friends, together with a very professional course measuring and marking effort by Chris, that's just what we did.

My own plan to take part in the run was scuppered by an ill-timed dose of flu. Instead I spent the day helping on the fruit, snacks and drinks table which the runners and walkers passed every 5km, thanks to the ingenious course design, along with others including Chris himself who couldn't run due to injury. This was easily one of the most enjoyable, friendly and meaningful events I've ever been part of and it more than made up for missing out on the official marathon. Lindy's determination and cheerfulness were inspiring. It was also a great pleasure to meet the other runners, some of whom were preparing for the Comrades marathon in South Africa. All in all, a very special day.

The event got some nice coverage in the Canberra Times with one article featuring some of those involved and another with a lovely photo of Lindy and Heather on the course.

May: Two runs at Lake Gillawarna

Beatty Reserve is a parkland setting with a great network of hard and soft paths. It's a terrific place to run and May provided two opportunities on successive weekends: the Sri Chinmoy Mirambeena 16km and the Heart of the Lake 10km. Both events were blessed with perfect conditions: cool and still with lovely winter sunshine.

I love all of the Sri Chinmoy events but I think this is my favourite of their Sydney series, both for its beautiful setting and also for the smaller, more informal atmosphere compared to the larger events at Centennial Park and other venues. The 16km course sticks to the hard paths and involves two out-and-back legs with several short but testing hills. I remember walking a couple of these when I first did the event in 2007, so it's satisfying to be able to run them now, albeit slowly and with enough leg pain and puffing to ensure I remained firmly "in the moment". The post-race pancakes were very welcome !

The Heart of the Lake course takes in some of the soft paths in the park as well as another selection of testing hills, including one particular leg-torturer that seems to get ever steeper as you puff and struggle to the top. The Westies, as usual, went out of their way to provide a great race-day atmosphere and plenty of friendly encouragement. After taking a couple of kilometres to warm up I settled into a rhythm and had one of those lovely runs where all of my bits actually seemed to be working together. As a result I finished quite a bit sooner than I was expecting, feeling all in but happy.

July: Shoalhaven King of the Mountain

In preparation for the M7 Cities Marathon at the end of July I planned to do a 32km training run early in the month. Lo and behold, I discovered this wonderful event not too far from Sydney, with what sounded like a lovely farm and bushland course that was just the right length. So much nicer than grinding out a long run in the local suburbs on my own. The only hitch I could see was the bit about 'mountain'...

As it turned out, this was one of the nicest runs I've ever done. Actually, run-walk would be more accurate because running up the mountain, or even some of the lower foothills, was beyond me. The race field was small (about 130) and very friendly with lots of chats when breathing allowed. I really enjoyed catching up with my running friend Sonia, who I hadn't seen for ages, and meeting CoolRunners Tim and Mani (doing the run in his FiveFingers) for the first time.

The aid stations were fantastic: each one providing plenty of encouragement and fine humour along with the drinks and fruit. The aid station at the top of the biggest climb, Mt Scanzi, even offered a shot of Bundaberg rum as a reward for reaching the summit ! Not only did it deaden the pain, it warmed my insides very nicely on the subsequent cool, shady downhill section. Approaching the finish at the Kangaroo Valley showground, runners were greeted by a bagpiper, apparently another long standing tradition of the race and not one that I've struck at any other event. After that it was just a short run across the showground to the finish line where, best of all, my family were there to greet me.

I wore my huaraches for the run and they attracted a lot of comments and even a photo request from a lady at one of the aid stations - I guess they were the weirdest thing she'd seen for a long time. I'm happy to report that they were comfy the whole way on the gravel roads and my feet were in fine nick at the end.

Many thanks to the Nowra Athletics Club and everyone involved in putting on such a terrific event.

Getting faster despite my best efforts

I think it's already safe to say that this has been my best running year so far in terms of actually feeling like a runner. I'm still slow but now I'm slow and comfy rather than slow and gasping for breath. Sometimes I've even caught myself enjoying running up a hill.

There's no special reason for this new found runner-ness, no magic training regimes or nutritional supplements or motivational mantras have made the difference. And I haven't bought a Garmin. It is, I suppose, just the very gradual improvement that comes from running regularly over the last couple of years. This is all very nice except for one thing: I'm no longer always at the back of the pack.

I'd grown very used to being somewhere near last in every race, whereas now I find myself flirting with the slower middle class and reaching the finish with, or sometimes in front of, people who I've always thought of as much speedier than me. I know you're supposed to be pleased when your times get better. On the CoolRunning Australia forums it sometimes seems that the only topic of conversation is one's Personal Best Time and the endless quest to lower it, but I've never felt much affinity with this. I've always been more interested in how much I enjoyed a run rather than how long it took me. And since I started running to manage depression, the last thing I wanted to do was obsess about time targets, race placings and Continuous Improvement.

At the recent Sri Chinmoy Centennial Park half-marathon I finished in a bit under 1hr 55min - the first time I'd run the distance in less than two hours. I've absolutely no idea why I ran that well, especially since I woke up feeling particularly sluggish and unathletic. But during the run everything seemed to come together and it felt good to push a bit harder than I normally do. Afterwards however, I felt distinctly uncomfortable about people commenting on my time and suggesting I'd have to change my running name from 'slowmo' to something else.

John Bingham, author of one of my favourite running books 'The Courage To Start', wrote about this same discomfort. Despite years of deliberately run-walking at a leisurely pace in his races, based on the notion that more time means more fun, he found himself getting faster. For someone who had made a living out of his public image as a very slow but happy runner, no longer being at the back of the pack was something of an identity crisis.

Where is all this leading ? I don't know yet. Running takes one onto surprising and unknown paths inwardly as much as it does outwardly.

slowmo in slowmo

To the bemusement of neighbours and passers-by I spent a few minutes the other day filming myself running backwards and forwards past my house in an attempt to discover what my feet are doing when I run. To try to capture my typical running form I did the filming after I'd got back from an easy 5km run. I arranged each "pass" so that there were a few metres of running either side of the camera's view and I tried to keep to my usual slow-ish pace.

I don't own a video camera so I set up my trusty little Panasonic Lumix snappy camera, which has a movie mode, on a tripod at the bottom of my driveway. The camera saves the movie as a .mov file. To create a slow-motion sequence I loaded the file into QuickTime, exported selected bits to image sequences (sets of jpeg still images), then imported each of these back into QuickTime at 6 frames per second.

And here is the result...



The verdict ? Well, it seems that I land with a mid-foot strike. This came as quite a surprise. When I'm running, I feel like I'm landing towards the front of my foot. But the camera doesn't lie and it could be that my impressions were influenced more by what I thought I should be doing rather than by what I actually was doing.

You can't always get what you want

My big goal for this year was to undertake the Sri Chinmoy Peace Triathlon for the first time. But my preparation for the event has been less than ideal... in fact, dismal sums it up fairly well.

Ever since a bout of flu earlier this year, I don't seem to have been able to string more than a couple of weeks together before falling prey to some bug or other. None of them serious, just unpleasant enough to interrupt training.

So yesterday, with less than a fortnight to go before the event, I finally had to admit that I wasn't going to make it. I contacted Prachar Stegemann, who for many years has been the organizer of this and a host of other Sri Chinmoy events in Australia, and asked if I could drop down from the Peace Triathlon to the Classic event (1.5km swim, 40km cycle, 10km run).

Prachar replied with a typically encouraging email that cheered me up immensely. I hope he won't mind if I quote this line from it:

The best things are worth waiting for, so doubtless the longer you have to wait for that moment of crossing the finish line of the Sri Chinmoy Peace Triathlon, the more satisfying that moment will be!

Sri Chinmoy Prospect Creek 24km run, 13th September

I did this event last year and remember shivering at the starting line in the morning chill. This year it was just the opposite - unseasonally hot.

Only a very small field turned out for the 24km race although there were more for the 12km and 6km events. Right from the start it felt warm, even though it was just a little after 8am.

Getting to the end of the first 12km lap I was sorely tempted by the sight, sound and, above all, the smell of the pancake brekky being enjoyed by those who had already finished their events.

I plodded round the second lap at an ever slower pace. By this stage each water station was like an oasis in the desert. The finish line was a welcome sight when I reached it, but even more welcome were the pancakes, still being served by the wonderful Sri Chinmoy folk - better than any trophy !