Race Report: Pinnacles Classic

The dam the course runs around

This race report’s going to be short and sweet as I don’t have much time, and it goes something like this…

So two weeks ago I was fairly sick with the man flu, aka a cold, and didn’t do much training all week. In the week leading up to the race I had a few college and uni requirements that meant I couldn’t do the full week of training as specified by the plan, but the stuff I did do I was really happy with. And if you’ve been following me along on Strava you would’ve seen that I’ve been having a niggling quad problem. But after seeing the physio and getting some dry needling done they felt fine on race day, and I went into the race feeling confident. I had done the course before as a training run so I knew what I was in for, 18(ish) hills in 18km with halfway being the highest point of the run. However, as part of the marathon training I’ve been doing I haven’t been doing much climbing. Maybe one hill repeats session a week and bit of easy running around Mt Cootha, but certainly not to the extent that I was doing early in the year. Hence going into the race I was looking for at least a podium and hopefully even a first. Hahaha well....

Elevation profile of the run

I started off quick, taking the lead with no-one coming along with me. The idea I had since I was feeling good was take the lead from the beginning and try and hold it, taking the climbs relatively easy and smashing the downhills as fast as possible. What I didn’t take into consideration is just how unfit I am in relation to climbing. I held onto the lead until about 3km where 2^nd and 3^rd overtook me on one of the climbs, and then about a km later I fell into 5^th where again I got overtaken on a climb, it made me feel like I was going backwards! I didn’t lose any ground on them on the downhills, but every time there was a climb I slipped further and further back. By 8km my calves were cooked and my race was all but over. By 9km I lost sight of 4^th and it felt like every climb I did in the second half of the course lost me another place. And to top it all off my peroneal tendonitis came back with vengeance at about 12km in, and as I’m writing this (a few hours after the race) my foot is hurting like crazy. All this road running I’ve been doing made me think it might be gone because it hasn’t flared up in months, but unfortunately not. I ended up finishing in 8th in a time of 1.33.06 which was about 10 minutes slower than I had wanted. Oh well, in the scheme of things not finishing on the podium at a training race such as this isn’t the end of the world, but still a bit disappointing. Especially since at no point in the race did I feel aerobically tired, I could’ve done the ‘talk test’ no problems. It was pretty much my legs that let me down. I’ve learned my lesson, don’t expect big things from a race that you’re not specifically training for. 

Happy to see the finish line! Photo courtesy of Laura from The Trail Co

Next up on my calendar is the Brisbane Trail Marathon in 4 weeks time for a bit of fun and to try out a few different strategies in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon. Until then this novice is out.

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Race Report: Twilight Run 10km (and Uni Life)

Hey look, I’m back! This ol’ blog site hasn’t quite gone 10 feet under yet, but without a doubt my posts will be few and far between. The reason that I'm back is the fact I ran my first 10km race in about 2(ish) years last night.

The finish line. Photo Credit Meng Li

The reason for running in a ‘road race’ (yuck, what an awful term) is to see where I'm at in terms of training. For the past 2 months I’ve been in my ‘base building’ phase. A lot of easy k’s within the aerobic zone (for me that’s around the 5min/km mark on flat), just trying to have something I can work off for the rest of the year. And I get to finally start specifically training for the Gold Coast Marathon next week, so exciting times. But as part of the base building, I haven’t really done much speed work and if I want to achieve my goal of breaking 3 hours for the marathon, I’m going to need to be speedy. This race was all about that. Speed. So the goal was to break 40 minutes, as I’ve only ever done that once a few years ago when I was still doing track work. But since this race means nothing to me in the grand scheme of things, I needed to try and do it without destroying myself, so I could jump straight back into training the next day.

3 days before the race I jumped onto the UQ track to do a 2km at 4min/km, then with a 5 min break, a 3km at 4min/km and during that race-pace session the signs weren’t good about me breaking 40 mins. The first 2km were easy but I really struggled with the 3km rep, only just making the required 12 mins. Not good. The only thing I hoped that would change come Sunday is the fact I’d be running with other people, and this would help me get across the line in the desired time.

Sunday rolls around and it rains, a lot - putting the humidity through the roof, but since the race was held in the late afternoon, at least it wasn’t too hot (in Brisbane terms, it was still 26°C, I’m sure I’ll get used to the heat eventually 😜)

The course

 My race plan was this; as I didn’t know how long I could hold out for pace wise, start out and try and hold 3.50min/km for the first 3km and try and have a 30 second buffer, then drop back to 4min/km, save some energy for the short climb at the 8km point, then depending on how I’m going time wise, either push hard to try and break 40min, or take it cruisy to get across the line. Not quite what happened. I didn’t anticipate the first 3km to be the twistiest of the course (have a look of the course map, you’ll understand what I mean). So I was about 10 seconds behind schedule at the 3km point. But what I also didn’t expect is to have such a strong 4^th, 5^th and 6^th km. I was really happy being around the 3.50 mark and it feeling easy. There was a bit of a head wind that picked up for the final 4 km’s, but when I crossed the bridge and hit 9km at 35.12 I knew that unless I injured myself, there would be no way I wasn’t going to cross the line over 40 mins, so I took my foot off the pedal and cruised home, knowing that training would start again the next day.

I ended up coming home in an official 39.16, which got me 31/1569 and 3^rd in the 18-19 category. So happy! Thanks to the vollies at all the aid stations whom gave out water so I could douse myself and not die from the humidity, and to the race organisers. A great event!

On a completely separate note, uni! Most of you who are reading this would realise that I relocated from Sale, Victoria to Brisbane to continue my education and that I’m currently studying Exercise and Sport Science at the Uni of Qld, while residing at King’s College. How’s it going so far? Yeah, pretty good. O-week was hectic, but it terms of stripping the freshers down and building us back up again, a similar program run by Lord Somers Camp and Powerhouse probably does it a bit better (then again, LSC&PH also does have over 100 staff to support the 100 people going through the camp compared to 40 or so King’s leaders to the 140ish freshers, the King’s leaders did a good job!) O-week helped me to create a lot of new friendships which is exactly what I needed moving to a completely new area, not knowing anyone. And life at the college since then has been great, there’s a real sense of mateship amongst everyone that resides here. Everyone is proud to get around each other at all the sporting events and represent the ‘Wyvern’ (the college ‘mascot’ as it were). And there’s always something on, which can get in the way of studies. Speaking of which, studying. I thought going back to hit the books after a year off would be fairly hard, but for me it isn’t, especially since the content is so relevant to what I do as a sports enthusiast. It also helps that a lot of the content that’s been covered in these first few weeks across all my courses is stuff I’ve already learned in year 12 (except for the chemistry, god how I hate chemistry). Almost everything is sweet, my only bugbear is the hierarchy within the college. 1^st years are at the bottom of the pile, 3^rd years at the top. Which for all intents and purposes I’m happy with, the longer you’re here, the more respect you’re given. The only issue is that I’m (for the most part) 2 years older than most of the freshers (so many 17 year olds, I thought I left that back in high school haha), which means that I’m the age of a lot 3^rd year college students. I’m still trying to figure out how I fit into the scheme of things, but I’ll get there eventually!

 

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Race Report: Kilcunda Half Marathon

I feel like I need to start this off with a warning. In you, ‘the reader’s’, opinion some my previous race reports may have been a little boring to read (where as I am super-biased and have loved reading back on all of them) but this so far will have to take the cake. I’ve had long runs which have been more interesting. So, with that mind, this race report is mainly for me, as a chance to look back on what is my first planned ‘b-race’ (or training race).

So, I went into the race not knowing anything about it, apart from the fact that it was a half marathon and run along the coast. I usually try to research a race before I run in it so I can have some sort of plan, but since for this one I didn’t care how I went, I didn’t do any. But I tell you what, I probably should’ve. And my race day went a little something like this…

Wake up 3.30am Sunday morning, have breakfast, grab my stuff, jump in car, drive over 2 hours, get out at Kilcunda, watch epic sunrise, look left, look right, right seems good I’ll go right to do my warmup, warmup run is dead flat and on rail-trail, assume all of run is going to be flat, decide that I’ll try to have an average pace of 4.30min/km and go to the start-line ready to run. At the briefing we runners are told that it’s an out and back course, first running in the direction of my warm-up, for 2km before turning around and running back past the start line and then in the other direction for another 9ish km, then turning around and heading for home.

Epic sunrise

The race starts and I, as per usual, start out faster than intended running a 4.07 first km, but surprisingly this didn’t put me up in the pointy end. I was sitting in around 10^th position and here I would stay until around 9km, where I climbed one spot to end up finishing in 9^th overall. In the first 4km’s nothing interesting happened, if anyone has run on a rail trail you know what I’m talking about. But hey, at least I had the ocean on the right side of me heading out, and on the left coming back, that was pretty cool. And there was a good group of 4 of us (leading female and 3 dudes) that were running at the same pace as each other, and it’s always better running as a pack then individually, but this only lasted until the 7km point where we either sped up or slowed down. I suppose I should also mention that I had a bit of pain on the left side of my left foot but it was minimal and went away at around 5km (I was wearing my Speed Instincts). This run, for me, went from boring to really, really good about 6km in where I discovered there were in fact, hills, and single trail and epic cliffs to look at! This was the start of the George Bass Trail and boy, was it good. The sea views though, were the highlight. The trail twisted and turned, dropping down to sea level then climbing to be on top of cliffs. It went from grass, to gravel, to dirt and a lot of it was single track, but the killer that I wasn’t expecting was soft sand 9.5km in that lasted for 500m on the way out, and the course changed slightly so that on the way back it lasted about 800m, and this for the most part is where my training race was derailed.

Up until this point I was still on an average pace of 4.30min/km but after the sand I wasn’t able to get another km under 5min. The sand just knocked everything out of me, and I wasn’t willing to push myself from 10km onwards as I knew I still had to train the next day and the next week. So I changed tactic, instead of focusing on overall pace, I would focus on my transition from running uphill to downhill, downhill to uphill, etc. etc. because as you can see, this course is super undulating. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done a run prior to this that is so up and down so frequently. Apart from the first 4km, there is barely a section that is flat. And I know from previous experience in other races, a weak spot of mine is going from climbing or running downhill back to running on relative flat. So this race was the perfect opportunity to try a few different things, such as feeling like I’m lifting my knees up higher on the flat after I’ve just finished climbing. Or trying to get my legs turning over quicker. I’m still not sure what does work best, but at least I’ve got some idea, which means this training race was useful!

Up and down, Garmin tells me I climbed 299m

Thanks goes to Running Wild and all the volunteers who helped make this day happen! And special mention goes to everyone at Marriot Support Services who participated, well done 😁. I can’t imagine a better way to finish my racing season in Victoria (though hopefully I’ll be back in 2018). Onto to QLD!

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What's in store...

Photo of a photo that's in 'Trail Run Mag's' Calendar Image: Lyndon Marceau

Ahh January, the time of the year where big plans are made and there isn’t an exception for yours truly.

So what are my plans? First and foremost is my impending move up to Brisvegas for uni, hitting the books full time to get a degree in Exercise and Sport Science from the University of Queensland. This will take priority over running, but hopefully I can put my time management skills to good use to do some training and maybe even participate in a few races.

January: Two Bays 56km (and you can see how that one went here)

February: Kilcunda Half Marathon

March: UQ Twilight Run (unsure which distance yet, maybe smash out a quick 10km)

May: Brisbane Trail Marathon

July: Gold Coast Marathon (my biggest race of the year, with the hope of breaking 3 hours)

September: Either the Glasshouse 30km or the Coastal High 50km (depending on fitness levels)

October: The Blackall 50km (my second biggest race of the year)

2018: Buffalo Stampede Ultra (all roads lead to this)

I also hope to do some crewing/volunteering for some races in the South Eastern Queensland area, and try to continue learning how to race better for the ultra-marathon distance. But until then, I’m going to try and continue building on my fitness from last year and if you’re curious, here’s my base building plan, modeled off something I found in ‘Where the Road Ends’. Then in March (6 weeks before the marathon) I’ll start my specific marathon plan.

Monday	30 minute 6min/km recovery run
Tuesday	45 minute 5 min/km easy run
Wednesday	Gym in the morning, 30 min easy in evening
Thursday	60 minutes 5min/km easy run
Friday	30 minutes 5min/km easy run
Saturday	Gym
Sunday	2-3 hour long run

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