jayneandmarty.com

Well yesterday was great and crap at the same time.

To get the crapness out of the way first, it didn’t really hit me how much I wanted to be out there running until I went into the MCG at about 8.45am and saw all the half-marathon competitors successfully finishing. (Their start was 7am) They’d reached their goal and I hadn’t. Nuff said.

But Jayne had fun, so let’s talk about her.

We’d arranged to stay at a friend’s house in Alphington the night before, so we had the luxury of a semi-lie in and a small breakfast before driving down Hoddle St to park in East Melbourne. We found a spot at the top of Fitzroy Gardens, which gave us a nice shady walk through them towards the G. That took around 10 minutes and soon after reaching the ground we found the competitor section and the spectator section, then met up with the work friend Jayne has been training with.

Jayne outside the G

The starting line was across the footbridge down by the Yarra, and walking over there it quickly became clear that there were loads more people around than the Nike+ race last month. Plenty of bods stretching, hydrating and eating bananas.

Jayne near the start line

The start was pretty chaotic. Your personal time doesn’t start until you run under the starting arch (you get an electronic timing thing to attach to your shoe), so the entrants who planned to walk the 10km could have done the right thing and started at the back. But no. Selfishness or perhaps just plain stupidity saw plenty of walkers right at the front of the 7,000-strong field walking 3 abreast and not caring one bit who they were holding up. The organisers could have arranged that a little better, no doubt, but there’s no substitute for actually using your brain.

A section of the entrants at the start

This guy fair dinkum sprinted the first 100m - clearly he wanted to be able to say he led the field at the start

Notice the Warwick Capper lookalikes not far behind him. And not far behind them were the first of the thicko walkers

Back to Jayne. Her route took her up to Fed Square, down St Kilda Rd and along The Tan in reverse to the top of the Anderson St hill, then back along the same route to the southern bank of the Yarra, along it and across the Anderson St bridge, back up to the tennis centre and then to the G, where all runners completed a lap before crossing the finish line. And when I say The Tan in reverse, I don’t mean she had to run it backwards, Rob and Kate.

Running under the Swan St bridge, about 6.5km in

Jayne crossing the line

Ignore the empty MCG stands in the background - where I was sitting was chockers. Probably 5,000 spectators.

In that last photo the clock says 1:13:33, but that’s the gun time. Her actual time (i.e. from when she crossed the start line to the finish line) was somewhere around 1:09:30, which is a PB by two minutes. I reckon that’s fantastic given how slow and congested the start was, but she’s disappointed she didn’t break 1:05! Clearly she’s hooked on the running.

After the race with her finisher’s medal

All up it was a great day out. She’s already talking about a 15km event at the end of November and we’ve been looking at race calendars to find other events we can be a part of. I don’t see running becoming a huge part of our lives but we both enjoy it, it’s (mostly) free, it feels good after a run (even just a short training run), our fitness is improving (especially Jayne’s - three months ago she found it tough completing 2km), and there’s a strong sense of camaraderie at the events, so we’re both hooked for now.

I think I may be suffering from Osteitis Pubis. Boo.

I haven’t been to the doc or a physio yet, but the symptoms listed on that web page seem about right, as is a common cause (distance running). The page mentions how dull pain can be present at the start of exercise, then go away during exercise, only to return when the exercise is over. That’s pretty much spot on. When I’m walking around it feels like I have to drag my left leg a bit to avoid a dull ache in my left groin, but when I run it feels normal.

I’ll visit a physio later this week but am already mentally resigned to the fact that running the half-marathon in two weeks’ time is not a good idea. The condition only gets worse the more exercise you do, and the most effective treatment is rest.

I’m disappointed. I’ve worked pretty hard to get my physical and mental fitness to the point where I know I am capable of running that distance, so it’s a bummer to find out that even though I’ve trained carefully, gradually increasing my distances by a km a week, the training has caused the injury and there’s pretty much nothing I can do about it.

But I haven’t got too much to complain about. I’ll rest up and try again next year. Besides, Jayne’s still entered in the 10km so I’ll be able to cheer her on and take lots of photos.

On Sunday’s wet and cold morning we joined the throng of runners clad in red Nike t-shirts to run 10km through the streets of Melbourne in the Australian leg of the Nike+ Human Race, a global event with 25 participating cities including London, LA, Taipei, Buenos Aires, Vancouver and Munich. Each city’s run started at a different time, but all races were run on Sunday 31 August.

Despite the chilly weather there were heaps of people lined up at the start line, all ready to either run a PB or just finish without assistance from the St John’s Ambulance guys. We saw entire families running together, groups of friends helping each other up the hills (perhaps only running so they could get into the post-race Hilltop Hoods/Faker gig?), and of course the serious runners effortlessly bouncing along like gazelles. It’s amazing how they can run so fast for so long.

The course took in most of The Tan (including the infamous Anderson Street hill) before heading to Fed Square, up Russell Street and Collins Street, around Fitzroy Gardens and up the Lansdowne Street hill, then back past Flinders Street station to for the big finish in Kings Domain. The course seemed thoughtfully planned, taking in a bunch of landmarks whilst still challenging us with some good hills and long straights.

For me, this race was part of my training for the Melbourne half-marathon in October, so I was planning to take it pretty easy, run my own pace and finish inside 60 minutes without hurting myself. Jayne had two goals: to run the whole way and to finish in less than 1hr 20min. She hadn’t done 10km in training, so just finishing would be a PB anyway!

We thought it would be tough to avoid being swept along by the crowd at too fast a pace for the first few kms, and the last thing either of us wanted to do was burn all our energy in the first half of the race and fall in a jelly-legs heap with 500m to go, so our plan was to just maintain our rhythm and let others pass if they wanted to run faster. We weren’t running together (as we run at different speeds), but the plan worked pretty well. Jayne was zoned out to her iPod and both of us had done enough training runs to pace ourselves properly.

I crossed the finish line after a big sprint finish (had to pull something out of the bag for the crowd) in 54m16sec, a respectable time but not as quick as I’d run in training. Must have been the hills. After monging down a couple of free Powerbars and some Gatorade I walked back to the finish line and a few minutes later cheered Jayne through. She finished in 1hr 11min (official race time 1:16 but that included a 5 minute toilet stop!) and she was ecstatic that she’d achieved all three of her goals.

All up it was a great morning out. If they organise another one next year we’ll definitely be there.

Next stop for me: the 22km Melbourne half-marathon on October 12, and Jayne’s entered herself for the 10km race on the same day. She’s busting to beat her time now!

We’ve signed up for the Nike 10km “Human Race” on August 31, and although I’m already running that distance for my half-marathon training, Jayne really needs a way to train during the week for the next few weeks.

So is there a borrowable treadmill anywhere …….. ?

Just asking before we go down the joining-the-gym route.

I just entered myself for the Melbourne Half-Marathon on 12 October. I’ve never previously run more than 8km in one go, but I’m running The Tan in 18 minutes (best time four years ago was 15.30), so I figure with a bit of training I’ll make the distance OK.

Stay tuned … but note that most of the updates will be on martinjy.com.

(P.S. If you read martinjy.com and this blog sorry for the double post. I decided it was relevant to both blogs!)