Metronome Melbourne Marathon

For self preservation reasons - both physically and mentally - I ran a metronome Melbourne Marathon yesterday - ie, a very conservative, evenly paced run. As per my previous blog and Facebook whinging, I went into the event not marathon fit, with a lingering knee injury, and a rotten head cold. On top of that was the psychological pressure of knowing that I had not run well on the Melbourne Marathon course in the past. So, there were quite a few skeletons waiting to leap out of the closet and get me!

I don't know about you, but when I've got a bad head cold I feel at my worst first thing in the morning and yesterday was no exception. I woke up to the alarm at 4.45am and seriously questioned why I was about to run 42.2kms. But you know how it is, there's a point where you just stop asking yourself "why?" and you just get on with it.


I started conservatively and felt pretty ordinary for the first ~10km. Physically it felt like more of an effort than it should have been for being so early in the run, plus my confidence was low and my runny nose was streaming! Between 10km and 20km I felt similarly physically but my spirits were lifted a bit because I love the scenery around that part of the course. By half way I felt better again emotionally for having got to half way and this feeling was further reinforced when I went through 26km and recalled having to walk with a hammie injury at that point last year (Ugh!). Physically I still felt like I was having to work harder than I should have been for the slow pace I was running (my definition) but with a throbbing head and the knowledge that my lack of fitness could really start telling on me from 30km onwards I wasn't going to risk trying to up the pace. Also, I was getting as dehydrated from my runny nose as I was from sweating, and was concerned that I was so thirsty. I drank a lot more in this marathon than I normally do. From 36km onwards I just put myself in a trance and just kept on keeping on. I was glad to get over the finish line in the not too disgraceful time of 3.24.39, and to meet up with lots of my family and friends.

Although I wanted to run a pretty evenly paced race I didn't take too much notice of my splits at the time. I just ran as I felt and that turned out to be almost textbook evenly paced.

10km - 47.42 (4.46min/km)
20km - 1.35.54 (4.47min/km)
30km - 2.24.27 (4.48min/km)
40km - 3.14.25 (4.51min/km)
42km - 3.24.39 (4.51min/km)

At any other time I don't think I could be that close to exactly evenly paced if I tried!

It's proper rest and recovery time for me now and then back to my new training plan which I'd only just started in the 1-2 weeks before the Melbourne Marathon. There's still some great running events to do before the end of the year :)