websiteilliteratedon'tknowwhatthisbitis
Running Through China
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Race Pictures
  • Nutrition For Runners
  • Contact Me

Eight Seconds

7/9/2014

11 Comments

 
I’m back from Australia. The last week has literally flown. I had an awesome, wonderful time and now it seems like a vivid dream of sorts, so quickly it felt like it went by.

I will talk about the race a little bit (as that’s maybe why most of you are here?) and then will possibly bombard you with photos of my best friend Annie and I, thoroughly enjoying our long overdue catch-up.

So, firstly – the race. This was the BEST and most well organised race I have ever taken part in. Everything was seamless and smooth, from the race bib pick-up to the shuttle bus transport to the race, to the different corrals and starting zones. As it’s their 36th event (I think) it seems they have definitely got it down pat. Unusually (or so I thought), the timing chip was actually part of the race bib and not a separate one worn on your shoe. Also, this was the first race I’ve ever run where you don’t get your t-shirt until the end of the race, just after you’ve crossed the finish line, so it means you know you’ve earnt it, lol…

The race started at 6am, but they instructed us to get there at 5am. Yep, that’s a very early start, and a fair bit of waiting around. However, this time also flew by, and after some wandering around to find my starting zone (different zones assigned by your last race time or your intended time for this one; there was zone A, B, C, and maybe D? Not sure… I was luckily in Zone A, which was perfect as I was surrounded by other runners aiming for the same pace and time as me, and so, far from the other runners being a hurdle and aiming not to trip over feet and around people in the first few kilometres, they were all on the same mission to get out there and into their race pace it seemed, and everyone flowed nicely), drinking coffee, and using the portaloos a few times, before we knew it the race had begun.

The first 10-11kms went perfectly – exactly how I’d wanted to run, although maybe even a little bit faster than I’d planned for my first 3 kms, however, this was again due to the other runners in my zone as I naturally joined pace with them – not uncomfortably fast though, just a little bit quicker than in practice (so, was 4:30 rather than the 4:45 I thought I’d go at). It is a very beautiful course, and I got to run past my new apartment after the first 3 kilometres (and again on the return at about 17 ish kms).

At about 13 kilometres in though, things were suddenly not so good. It’s hard to describe but I couldn’t keep my pace up, things felt a definite struggle, and I had gone freezing cold/cold sweats/shivery type feel, where I was thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to curl up under a blanket on the side of the road right about now’. Noooooooo! What was happening?? I kept going, but couldn’t keep my pace up for the last tempo interval. So, instead of running at 4:10 ish, I was running at 4:35-4:40. The mantras were helping (particularly ‘you’ve done it before, you can do it again!’), as was the image of seeing Annie at the finish line, but I just couldn’t get my speed back up and felt very strange (I think maybe I was dehydrated, despite trying to be well hydrated, or the recent long traveling was in hindsight not the best approach pre-race?). I just wanted to finish and thought I’d not care about my time or a PR anymore – just finish. I didn’t even look at how long it was taking me and thought for sure I’d be something like 10 minutes slower or more than last time. Before I knew it, the finish line was in sight and I tried to run faster and stronger over the line, as they called out my name and commented on all the race gear I was wearing (I did take my camelback after all, with the intention of not having to slow down at the drink stations – an idea that was working fantastically until I started feeling weird and slowed down to grab extra water anyway). That was it, I’d done it. As I focused on not vomiting and collapsing (managed not to! Success), I checked my time. Wow, I HAD done it after all! A new ‘official’ pb (as in, a race pb, even though I’ve got another pb in training). It wasn’t the 1:30 I was aiming for, but was a whopping EIGHT seconds faster than my Shanghai half in December. Haha, but a pb is a pb right?? So, my official time for this one was 1:34:23. Yes, every second counts, I suppose. Hmmm, months of training and achieving a ‘training pb’ of 1:31 all added up to me getting pretty much the same time as my previous, not-so-trained-for half marathon where I wasn’t focused on my pace or looking at a watch? I think the next race I’ll run I will run ‘naked’ and not focus on a time. I know I can do it theoretically and in training, and maybe I will try and beat my time again in the future, but for a while I may just get back to having fun while running. This race was a struggle, but I tried my best and did the best I could do on the day.

When the race was over, there was a smiling Annie waiting for me, amazingly she’d managed to spot me and we met up as planned, and I then followed the lead of some other runners and went for a 15 minute ‘ice bath’ in the beautiful early morning, winter ocean water. This was a first for me, but I am quite sure it helped – my legs recovered pretty fast and well, albeit with a touch of quad soreness the next day when walking around shopping and looking for restaurants. It took us almost two hours to make it the 5km back to our apartment!  And almost another 2 hours (once showered etc) to order, wait for and enjoy our breakfast after that. I suppose thousands of people in town for the races adds up to a lot of queuing for taxis and food and everything. After that, we relaxed and rested for a while (courtesy of copious cups of tea on the sofa together), and eventually ended up going out for celebratory drinks and, of course, more food, a fair bit later than planned. The next day was spent doing yet more eating in wonderful restaurants (there will be a fair few food-on-a-plate pictures, sorry if you’re not into that, but I was very excited to eat some awesome Australian fare that I’d been missing, so loads of fish/seafood and avocado, yumm…), shopping and walking around, and drinking. Oh and taking lots of pictures of ourselves to remind us of our trip, haha. And all too quickly somehow it was Tuesday early early morning and I was getting my taxi back to the airport to commence the looooonnnnng journey back to Husband and Puppy in China. It went something like this: taxi, plane no.1, walk through airport, plane no.2, taxi, train, bus, walk…. (over 1.5 days).

Here is my holiday in pictures, to give you a better idea of this race weekend and holiday with my bestie:

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
This morning I went for a run (about 8km ish) in my new shoes, to test out my legs and wear in the new shoes. Check them out, my shiny new pair. For those of you who know me in ‘real’ life’, no I did not choose them because they are pink! That is just an added bonus.
Picture
Tick, tick, on both counts. Legs feel fine and shoes went well. Oh yeah – absolutely NO pain or problems with my legs during the race in the end, phew… And I don’t think I even thought about them during, I was just focused on my struggling pace and labouring breathing instead, lol…

So, to sum up: I had an AMAZING weekend in Australia with the Beautiful Anne-Marie, I ran the Gold Coast half marathon (a beautiful, flat course, that I would love to run again), I achieved an official pb, AND upon checking my results a couple of days later, I found out that I came 110th woman (out of approx. 5000 – I will check again), and 26th in my age category too! Not too shabby.

Now it’s back into the packing and cleaning before we head off early Saturday morning on our amazing caravan tour through China! Now, if only there was a dimmer/slow switch for this time business. It really is going too fast. (I also need to catch up on all the things I’ve missed on various other running blogs since I’ve been gone, however this access to the internet will be short-lived, and during our caravan tour I don’t think we’ll have any internet access. So, it will be a whole month’s break from blogging and emails etc soon.)

11 Comments

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

6/2/2014

10 Comments

 
Picture
Hello Hello from me, Puppy, and Husband (Husband not pictured as he is the resident cameraman)! Gotta love a public holiday courtesy of Dragon Boat Festival. The weather has turned it on for us too - hot and sunny days, with minimal pollution, yay. Got in a fairly challenging stair running workout (30x reps of our building with a few 100m recovery jogs chucked in) this morning followed by about 45 minutes of strength/weights. Great start to the day. Since then, we've been cruising around eating delicious things and drinking some of China's finest red (well, the finest is debatable, but we like it anyway).

Got my final email re: the race on Saturday. Apparently there is a 12 hour cut-off time!!! Shithouse. Hope I make it. Don't know what to expect really. Oh, and no plastic bottles allowed on the course apparently ,so that might be tricky. (I have a camelback but have lost the bladder which I guess is the most important part if you're using it for water! D'oh...)

In other news: this website is being really RUBBISH and not letting me reply to any comments today. So, sorry about that! Will reply as soon as this is fixed. How frustrating!

I hope everyone has had a great Monday!

Do you run with a camelback?? Do you think I should invest in a new one before I depart for Beijing on Thursday?? (My instinct is telling me 'yes', hmmm...)







10 Comments

    Author

    A 30-something's running and travelling experience around the world.

    Archives

    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Categories

    All
    27th
    50km
    Abs
    Acting
    Active Recovery
    Afghan Hound
    Albert Einstein
    Amazeballs
    Angry
    Anhui
    Annie
    Anniversary
    ARD
    Australia
    Auto-pilot
    Autumn
    Awesome
    Bacon
    Badass
    Bali
    Barefoot Running
    Beautiful
    Beijing
    Ben Elton
    Besties
    Biryani
    Bliss
    Blog
    Blogger
    Blue Sky
    Boobs
    Books
    Bread
    Brighton
    Busy
    Calves
    Camelback
    Caravan
    Carbo Loading
    Carboloadingf2e058d5a9
    Cardio
    Caring
    Carpet
    China
    Chinese
    Chinglish
    Chocolate Milk
    Christmas
    Cleaning
    Close
    Coach
    Coffee
    Coincidence
    Cold
    Cooking
    Core
    Covert Mission
    Cross Training
    Cycling
    Dad
    Date
    Deepak Chopra
    Dehydrated
    Dough
    Driving
    Duck
    Excited
    Expectation
    Feeling Tired
    Flowers
    Flying
    Food Addiction
    Fresh Food
    Friday
    Fuel
    Full Moon
    Gangsta
    Garmin
    Genghis Khan
    GM
    Gods
    Gold-coast
    Goldilocks
    Goose
    Grass
    Grasslands
    Great Wall
    Green Tea
    Grief
    Grumpy
    Hair
    Halloween
    Hangover
    Hangry
    Hangzhou
    Hard
    Hasfit
    Hastings
    Hazara
    Health
    Healthy
    Henan
    Herbs
    Hohhot
    Holiday
    Hotel
    Huangshan
    Hui
    Hulunbeier
    Humid
    Hungry
    Hunter-valley
    Husband
    Ill
    Inner Mongolia
    Internet
    Jiangxi
    Jiuhuashan
    Kickboxing
    Knee Pain
    Lembongan Island
    Liebster-award
    Lijiashan
    Longmen Caves
    Long Run
    Lushan
    Mantra
    Marathon
    Mask
    Massage
    May-day
    Medical Exam
    Meh
    Memory
    Monday
    Mongolian
    Monsanto
    Mood
    Moon
    Morning
    Mother
    Motivation
    Motivational
    Mountains
    MTB
    Negative
    Nerves
    Newcastle
    New Job
    New-zealand
    Night
    Oatmeal
    Off The Beaten Track
    Oil
    Over Trainingffa29052b5
    Pain
    Past
    Pb
    Peanut Butter
    Photos
    Ping Pong
    Pingyao
    Playing
    Pollution
    Pool-running
    Porridge
    Positive
    Poyang-lake
    Procrastination
    Program
    Progress
    Pumped
    Pumpkin Pie
    Puppy
    Pussy
    Pyjamas
    Qingming
    Questions
    Quickie
    Rain
    Ready
    Recovery
    Red Belt
    Rest Day
    Riverside
    R-kelly
    Rob-schneider
    Rocky
    Runners-world
    Running Bracelet
    Running-group
    Running Movies
    Santos-bonacci
    Sav Blanc
    Scam
    Sex
    Shaanxi
    Shanghai
    Shanxi
    Shaolin Temple
    Shoes
    Sickness
    Singing
    Skittles
    Sleep
    Slow
    Smog
    Snickers
    Snow
    Solo
    Sore
    Speech
    Speed
    Speedwork
    Sports Bra
    Stationery
    Steps
    Stiff
    Strength
    Students
    Teaching English
    Temple
    Tempo
    Terracotta Warriors
    Text Message
    The Bund
    The Wall
    Threshold
    Time
    Tired
    Tofu
    Tongliao
    Track Workout
    Trailer
    Trail-race
    Training
    Triathlon
    Turkey
    Turmeric
    Twice
    Two
    Universe
    University
    Unsatisfied
    Vo2max
    Voice-over
    Water
    Weather
    Wedding
    Weekend
    West Lake
    White-horse-temple
    Whitney Houston
    Wine
    Worried
    WTF
    Xiamen Marathon
    Xian
    Xilinhot
    Yiwu
    Yoga
    Yungang Caves
    Zongzi

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.