Melbourne Marathon

On Sunday, I completed the final of my 2009 goals: I completed the Melbourne Marathon in a time of 3:16:52 - new personal best by over 1 hour! What a beautiful day it was too. Perfect running conditions. Sunny but cool and no wind to speak of.

You can see the course and other stuff that my Garmin 405 tracked and especially interesting are my 1km splits.

And this is the official results data.

The first half split is 1:37:18 and the second half was 1:39:47 but that doesn't tell the real story. For me it was more like this:

First 10km: I tried to keep the pace around 4:40min/k to run a 3:20 race as per my race plan. The 10k split shown on the official results is actually 10.5km so I was very much on track.

Second 10km: I decided that maybe I should push it a bit harder being that it is a race and all. Started running around 4:30min/km which felt more natural for me. I started to realise that unfortunately I was going to need a toilet stop at some point.

Next 12km: After a much needed toilet stop, I ran faster to catch back up to where I was before. I kept going at a decent speed and thought I might try to catch the 3:10 group. I was feeling very good at this point and dreaming of 3:09 or better. I ran a string of 4:20-4:25min km splits.

Next 5km: I ran into the back of slow half-marathoners as the groups merged at about the 33km mark. Very annoying. I started to feel some cramp coming on as I dodged through people and hopped up and down the curb to get around them, even having to stop dead at one point. 3:10 goal gone.

Next 4km: The half-marathon group split away again but at about the same time, I started really struggling to keep the cramp in my calves at bay. Other marathoners were falling apart worse than me – lots of runners trying to stretch out cramps against trees and one poor distressed guy was sitting on the ground. It was a slow struggle through 37km-41km. I had not quite hit the wall – but it was close. More like a fence than a wall. Sub 3:15 goal slipping away.

Last 1.2km: Head down and plodding away, I was just happy to be finishing under 3:20 at this point. Some woman ran right across my path and clipped me, causing my calf to cramp right up. I hoppled along in pain until I could shake the cramp. I spotted the '500m to go' marker and saw that I was on the ramp on the way up to the MCG. Suddenly I knew I had made it. I waited until about 100m out from the finish line then sprinted past a couple more people, just for fun. A guy posed for the camera 1m from the line and got cramp doing so so I nipped past him and finished rather happy.

Well, that's it for this blog. Even though this blog was named in honour of my half-marathon goal, it has allowed me to record my efforts in pursuing all my 2009 running goals successfully (and my 2008 goals not so successfully) but now that the year is coming to an end and I've achieved the 90 minute half-marathon, a blog named 90 Minutes has no future. Thanks for reading about my journey so far.