To be honest I did not expect to enjoy this race, 100 kilometres on a 400 metre track starting at 7pm. Why would anyone do this? I saw some benefits in terms of gaining mental toughness so I signed up. It didn’t go any better than I had anticipated but I learnt some lessons.
The best thing I did before the race was to download eight episodes of a podcast called “The Teachers Pet” about an unresolved murder investigation; I would have downloaded all 15 eps but I used up my motel internet allowance. Anyway, I had about 10 hours of audio and I listened to every last minute, credits, ads and all. I have never listened to a podcast while running before and while loading the episodes I was not too sure I would use them but I am so glad I took them with me. Music was not going to do it for me this time. The podcast was repetitive and easy listening, while harrowing, and I will be on the lookout for similar, but possibly happier, material next time I have a boring task to complete.
My other main takeaway from the race is that I still have work to do on my race nutrition strategy. I relied completely on the food provided, and while I felt critical of what was there I am not quite sure what I would rather have been offered (or brought myself). Over the twelve plus hours I ate some lollies (ok), two pieces of banana (ok), some watermelon (made me feel sick), a slice of pizza (man, I had been looking forward to this once I heard there would be pizza at 11pm but when it came I didn’t like it at all and nor did anyone else because they had a pile of pizzas sitting at the aid station all night!), crisps (made me gag). I’m thinking I would have liked sandwiches and chocolate (the mini Snickers at Narrabeen went down well). I’m still not sure how often I should have been eating, but I don’t think I ate often enough.
I was amazingly thirsty all through the night. I was prepared to drink to thirst but then I worried I was drinking too much. Impossible, I’m sure. Every time I had a drink I downed a large cup and always wanted more. It was a problem passing the aid station every 400 metres because I was never sure how long it was since my last drink/food. They handed out zooper doopers from time to time but ironically these just made me more thirsty.
And then weeing. I’ve had a problem of too many toilet visits in previous long races but this time I took any excuse to visit the portaloo. You see, there was nowhere else I could sit down. I wanted to rest a bit and my only option was the toilet! Many runners had brought a chair. Many spectators had brought a chair. Good idea; I had thought of this at home but not packed one.
The main event of the race for me was that I tripped over in lap 51. I know this from the results rather than from counting. There were sections of the metal rail that marks the inner boundary of the running track that were missing, but in some places the large metal clips that the rail attaches to were in position, and I had been noticing these thinking it would be a shame to trip on one of them. And then I did so.
I fell flat on my face very fast and very hard. Someone helped me up and after about ten seconds I resumed running. I felt ok apart from a bruised left knee. I could see grazing but I thought this was still from my adventure on the overgrown trail last weekend at Healesville. One of the race crew said the nurse was just coming and would look at me, so on the next lap, my knee bleeding a bit, I let her clean it up, while I declined to sit down for the treatment. This was lap 53 and only took me two minutes longer than other laps around this time.
Fast forward about fifty laps and I noticed my right thigh felt numb to the touch and rock hard. That’s the part I had really hurt, but I had to ignore this for a while.
As for the running. Well, the first half hour went by really slowly. I’m not used to seeing a clock so often. Time was standing still. I’d run for two minutes, then another two minutes, then another. How could this possibly become twelve hours? Or fifteen? The temperature was ok, 22 degrees at the start falling to 19 in the night and then to 18 in the early morning.
I had made a plan to run six laps then walk 200 paces until 50 km, then run three laps and walk 200 paces to 70 km then walk 200 paces every lap. But I didn’t do this after the first 20 laps. On those first 20 laps I only walked 100 paces when required. After a while I just ran, and walked when I felt like it, basically when I needed to manually move onto the next episode of the podcast. There was a screen showing how many laps we had done but it was hard to read while running by (not because I was moving fast but because the writing was hard to make out) so I chose not to think about what I’d done; I knew they would tell me when I could stop.
One of the highlights was the two bouts of Australia Day fireworks that we could see and hear. Those were pleasant interludes, as was the occasional plane - the track was near the airport. It was a cloudy night so there weren’t many stars and the moon was small. We changed direction every three hours, adding immense excitement into proceedings. I calculated, and hoped, that I would almost be finished by the 7am change of direction.
After a long long time, and seeing I had been running for over four hours, I peeked at the clock and saw I had done 36 km. That felt good, and I made it to 50 km not too shabbily. At that time I rued my decision to go for the 100 km rather than the 50 km. At least 50 km in under six hours was in my plan and achieved.
From then on I tried to stick to my pre race plan. But I was running too slowly, and I decided to walk more but run faster when I ran. This worked well for a while. And then I just seemed to be walking more, I don’t know how this happened.
I didn’t look at the clock for ages. Then I looked and I thought I read I had done 187 laps. The next lap I looked again and read that I had done 204, so I had misread the previous time. I felt so buoyed by the bonus laps that I ran nine laps without walking. Wow! Then I was just chipping away. Lots of people were finishing, counting down their final laps and this provided some entertainment.
I had decided I could allow myself to walk the last ten laps but when it came to that time I tried to run half of each lap. I tried to be running as I passed the race crew standing by the clock and to only walk on the far side of the track. But I didn’t always succeed. As I approached the clock, walking, and started my last lap they told me to run; I barely could run but I made a feeble effort. It was beyond wonderful to cross the finish line, in 12 hours 34 minutes and not long after the 7am change of direction. Although I was almost last of the runners who managed to finish within the fifteen hour time limit this was well within the goal I had set myself and a big 100 km PB.
As soon as I finished I wanted to relax and I flopped onto the grass (there was nowhere to sit, remember). The nurse wandered over and I told her how my leg was numb and sore. She touched my thigh and I winced. She was not impressed by my having run 80 km with a hurting leg but she was nice while being unimpressed. I’m sure she’s seen this before. She strapped some ice to my leg and said I should put on compression tights. (I don’t own any, and I certainly didn’t feel like driving around shopping after this ordeal.) When I tried to stand up I almost couldn’t; I limped to the car and drove back to the motel very painfully. Getting in and out of the car was tricky, and so was removing my calf sleeves, not easy even when my leg isn’t sore. I wrapped a bandage from the car first aid kit around my leg and went to bed. Then I continued listening to the podcast until I fell asleep.
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