My run in today's Gold Coast Marathon was a classic example of how sometimes poor preparation can result in a flukey decent race performance.
The last few weeks I've been working really long hours, been excessively tired, and running sluggish rubbish - training at 5.30am every day in the pitch dark and below zero temperatures. Against that back drop I went into today's marathon with no expectations of myself and keen just to run a relaxed long run in daylight and warm sunshine. As it turned out I felt consistently okay throughout the run and ran a remarkably even paced race, hitting half way ~95mins and crossing the finish line in 3.12. My finish time was both a slight improvement on my run in this year's Canberra/National Capital marathon and last year's Gold Coast marathon. It was also good enough for me to take first place in the Australian Masters Marathon Championships in my age group.
While I'm happy to walk away from today's marathon both surprised and happy to have run decently, I remain convinced that generally good preparation produces good race performances and that poor preparation produces poor(er) race performances. My goal is to go into my next race well trained and well rested in the hope that I can run even better. Of course the question is, which race will be next for me? Stay tuned.
4 comments:
Congratulations excellent result at Gold Coast.You are certainly correct about good preparation etc but don't overlook your great attributes i.e. self discipline, commitment, stability, judgement and self discipline, a required degree of boldness ( read guts),etc etc.Stand tall this morning and recover.
Hey Jog - Ewen and I have just read the results in the GC paper and you ran 3:11:57 - fantastic! You are a legend. It was awesome to see you looking so good afterwards. However, you missed a great coffee at Main Beach this morning and we missed you. The running weather here is perfect today! :)
Yeah, my net time (and my Garmin time) was 3.11.57 but the offical results go on gun time (ie, 3.12).
http://results.au.eventdirector.net/View.asp?EventID=3981&Bib=M4093
Makes you wonder what the point of having chip timing is. I thought the main point of it was to have an accurate start and finish time - ie, net time - based on when you run over the start and finish mats but it seems that chip timing in that sense is for personal use only and not official recording. It's a pity when a few seconds really does make a difference. Next year I'll have to run at least 5secs faster to make sure the official time is better!
It was a fab weekend and I fully enjoyed the catch up with running friends and the warm weather. Lucky you still being there lapping up the sunshine and great Gold Coast coffee. I'm very envious! Enjoy!
Interestingly, I just got my official marathon photos emailed to me and they all say 3.11.57. I'm very happy about that.
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