So, it was not my day for a PB here in beautiful Xiamen, but it wasn't due to my running or of that hitting the wall thing. Many things conspired to me ending up with a good 30 minutes added on to my first half of the race, which was apparently too hard to come back from to get a better time. I know, I know, it sounds like excuses hey, but let me talk you through them, as I ended up really surprised with my time being 3 minutes slower than my first marathon time, when I ran for the whole thing this time, didn't encounter 'the wall' (albeit a wall of people, but we'll get to that), and even finished feeling fairly strong and sped up for the last kilometre, and sort-of-sprinted across the finish line. So, when I crossed the line and then got my certificate printed out showing the accurate chip time of, wait for it, 4 hours 38 minutes, I was a little confused. Oh yes, then I remembered the start of the race.

Here's how it went down: about 80,000 people give or take (ok, not all in the full marathon event, but all squished in together regardless) trying to surge forward and commence a running race. There's music, there's excitement, there are the ever present cheers of 'jar yo!', and then: boom - everyone slows and stops completely and then proceeds to shuffle/walk VERY slowly for the next 1-2 kilometres. Major human traffic jam.

As soon as we were able to feel awesome and actually start jogging / prancersizing, I had my eyes out for a loo. A public one was located in the next 100 metres or so and I unfortunately had to leave the race so early on and join a big queue. Picture ten fun minutes of waiting. (Unavoidable, as apparently still suffering with a bug - almost didn't get up to even start the race this morning, but so glad I did, despite this story.)

So, it's kind of like I started running or the proper 'racing' about 20-25 minutes late. But anyhoo. On with the race. My fuelling strategy was going excellently and I was fairly confident that I was getting enough carbohydrate and water at regular intervals, but hey, you never know, especially with a stomach bug. But today, snickers were my main source of fuel, along with sports drinks at aid stations, and later, some coffee boiled sweets. I felt good running, felt like my pace was good - not too slow and not too fast (now that I could actually run).

So, no 'hitting the wall' as I was worried about, BUT at about 12 kilometres in, when the route takes everyone along an elevated underpass (one way in, no escape off the sides, sort of like a tunnel), disaster struck. Not joking here, was seriously worried for my safety. For some reason the front of the giant crowd had decided they had taken a wrong turn and were trying to force everyone back the other way, amidst more and more runners piling on in. You hear about people getting crushed to death and trampled on in concerts sometimes, and I have a fair inkling of how easily this could occur. Scary shit, I won't lie. But then, one lone soldier proferring a pointing finger gesturing us back into the melee of which we'd just escaped, signalled that we were going the right way in the first place and after some minutes (felt like 10, was prob nearer to five for the whole time, but who knows) we were free again and running along an amazing stretch of road that takes the runners over the sea and around to the Southern tip of the island. Seeing Xiamen from this beautiful angle soon got me over my near-suffocating experience, and it was on with the race.

Until disaster struck AGAIN. Luckily not too bad this time, but was probably worse for the ladies involved: Two women became entangled due to us having run on top of each other because of the numbers and they both went face first on the tarmac. Only ONE other runner stopped and together we helped them up. They said they were ok. Phew.

And then it was on with the race. The rest of the race had no hiccups, albeit my excellent new Garmin ran out of charge at about 30 kilometres. Damn. Must get used to charging it the night before a long run or race. Up until then, it was working like a dream, and it was fun (if a little distracting) to keep checking my pace and finally find what my comfortable pace really is. It ranges between 5 and 6 kilometres an hour, in case you were dying to know.

So, as I said before, I finished strong and felt great about the race, which is why I was surprised at the time, as in my previous marathon I spent the last 9 kilometres in pain and definitely the last 5 in agony and walked/limped to the finish line. So that versus non walking (except in and out of drink stations, oh yeah, and about 25 minutes plus at the start, lol), with a speedy finish? This is why this race is a running PB for me - not in terms of time, but in how I felt strong and good, and DID NOT HIT THE WALL! Yay! It is possible! So, very glad I did get out of bed this morning. Even better, I had this beautiful, amazing man waiting for me at the finish line: my beloved husband, coach and support team, what would I do without you H?! If you're reading this: thank you for all your support and love: I love you so much. (This is entirely appropriate too - all the banners along the route today said 'Run for Love'.)

Seriously, he went above and beyond to help me carb-load before the race last night. Check it out - was considering calling this post 'Fuelled By Jiaozi' (not sure if the photo's clear, but there were something like 64 dumplings that arrived at our hotel door - Champion H!):

The rest of the day pre-race yesterday was spent soaking up the beautiful beach scenes of Xiamen, riding around on a comedy tandem bicycle, and eating lots of rice, tofu and veggies and drinking a couple of carb-loading Tsingtaos of course:

Oh, and I better put a couple of race shots from today on here too, so here you go, enjoy!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2014 is a wonderful year filled with many more ups than downs for all.

We're off to Xiamen this morning, to pick up my race gear and check-in pre-marathon tomorrow, bit excited! Love Xiamen - beautiful beaches around the island and mountains/hills in the centre. Here's a couple of shots from our time in Xiamen last February:

Ok, better go and pack. Enjoy your day everyone and have fun!

Been a bit busy and distant lately, i.e not been writing on here much nor have been reading other runners' blogs, but hopefully I'm back now and ready to catch up on what I've missed and all your stories and holiday posts.

Haven't been running much either, but maybe this is my natural taper before the marathon on Thursday, rather than have just been too busy or travelling around showing my mum China? Nope, it was the latter, but hey-ho, it can surely act as a taper yes?

So, yes, the marathon (the FULL marathon) is only two days away, and I am quite unprepared for it hey. Or so it seems. Also, think we may have eaten some dodgy (but so delicious at the time) sushi on Sunday arvo which we're paying for now. So, fingers crossed am back to good health by Thursday morning.

One thing that will definitely help in my full marathon quest is THIS:

Oh yes, that IS a Garmin/running watch! Courtesy of my excellent brother and sister-in-law (and Husband for putting the idea out there) - sooo chuffed! I will now join the ranks of 'proper' runners, and will no longer be a vague or zen runner (well, sometimes anyway).

In other exciting news: I finally gave my English/Chinese speech about running to the whole school yesterday morning, after weeks of it getting postponed (which was fine by me - I kind of thought they would just forget about it eventually). It wasn't too bad, I think, but I was very tired and had sort of just rolled out of bed, so am sure my well rehearsed speech of a few weeks ago would have been much more coherent. Hey-ho, apparently they could understand it, so all good.

Amazingly I wasn't nervous, maybe this was helped by being forced on stage in front of approximately two thirds of the school a few days prior to this, as part of a 'program' they wanted us 'laowei' teachers to perform as part of the Grade 7 and Grade 8 end of year show.

Last minute as ever, they told us that morning, then we ran around tyring to get some music sorted, but the internet had problems, then when we eventually thought it was all good, and music was in hand on our USB, turns out, oh no, it wasn't there and we had to go out sans-music and perform. Oh joy. Husband was singing, bless him, with me and my mum waving an Australian flag, as he belted out the traditional 'Waltzing Matilda' to the happy, encouraging faces of our students:

And, phew, that other performance or 'program' we were told to prepare for? That has since been cancelled. Good news for us. This on-stage performance malarkey gets a bit exhausting.




I'm off to pack and organise some things for our Xiamen trip tomorrow morning. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Off I went, keen as proverbial mustard to give my 'motivational speech', complete in English and Chinese (Chinglish?) this morning. I first stopped by a class of my former students for a practise run-through. That went surprisingly well, and they could understand most of my Chinese. So, there I was expecting to be marched off towards the sportsground, where I was expecting the whole school to assemble for the flag-raising ceremony that I am to give the speech at. However, due to the terrible weather (wow, even the officials have noticed) all the schools have been told to keep their students inside at the moment, until the awful smog clears up So, that gives me an extra week's preparation, and also means my mother will get to come to the ceremony too as she'll have just arrived from England - if she wants to that is; first day in a new town with a 7:30 ceremony might be a bit of a rough start to a holiday?




So, I believe it was this man, Albert Einstein, who said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

For some reason I woke up thinking about this quote and its ramifications yesterday morning, and it got me thinking. For example, there's a good friend of mine who is constantly trying to lose weight. They go great-guns for a while: they stop drinking, they do more exercise, and hey-presto, they lose a fair bit of weight. Then without fail, they will have a few days on the drink and the weight comes straight back on, every time. I guess we, as people, are strong creatures of habit. But also creatures of HOPE. We really think or hope it will be different this time, hence the repetition of our 'mistakes' from previous attempts.

It got me thinking about doing the same thing over and over again with regards to running, and expecting different results. I think, in running long distances and endurance terms, that actually this is not the case. If you run the same route over and over, and at first (if it is a longer distance you're not used to, it may seem hard or too difficult). Then, over time, as you repeatedly run this route, it gets easier and easier to do, as the route and distance becomes habitual. However, if you are aiming to change your running speed or style or form etc, then yes, I think you must try different things to see different results. So, I am really happy that I actually followed a training plan for once, before this last half marathon, one that included speedwork, tempo runs, slow/recovery pace runs, and trial 10km races as part of the preparation for aiming to get a faster time at the half marathon. This was my first time using a track, and my first time diligently sticking to a program. And it worked! I didn't 'insanely' follow my usual own advice and same tactics for a race - I didn't repeat what I've been doing over and over and expect a different result - I did different things and got a different result. Yay :)




Now, just need to work out how to transform this 'get-faster-for-a-half-marathon' training I've been doing, into 'train-legs-and-stomach-for-long-distances-and-survive-the-full-marathon' training. Hmmm, watch this space. But any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

YES! Training success again! Feels awesome to have completed everything on my training plan, and NOT be struck down with some mysterious Chinese illness again.

Didn't end up going for that longish 18-20 km last Sunday but had a semi lie-in and then went to the dreaded TRACK instead. This proved to be a challenge in itself, as per the usual 'outside treadmill' mental battle, but I knew I'd feel great at the end of the workout (if only to be able to tick that off the list of training sessions that I missed when sick). I did 2km of warming up, then 2 km tempo, 1 km recovery pace, another 2 km tempo, then 2km cool down, and then my Sunday was truly upon me. Love Sundays. Forget exactly what we did, but it involved lots of eating, resting, loving, and laughing.

The rest of the week was full of training, teaching, one night of NO sleep for unexplained reasons, and an impromptu Halloween party (pictures below).

So, the night of NO sleep. This led to something that maybe I will live to regret? Was researching other running races around China at about 2 in the morning in a futile attempt to drift back off, when I might have (or ok, DID) sign up for a full marathon that takes place about a month after the all-important-have-been-training-diligently-for-months-Shanghai-half-marathon. I signed up for three reasons: 1) there is nothing more motivating than having an event to train for, and I have no doubt that this recent registration has again helped me to achieve this great week of running; 2) It will be held in beautiful Xiamen (beaches, beautiful trees and mountains; great people; tasty seafood etc.); 3) My mum will be with us here in China and she can experience all the fun of an international race, possibly picking up how to chant 'ya yo!' (probably spelt completely wrong - means something like 'more fuel!', to be chanted as runners go past, with or without the requisite flag waving or drum beating).

And as for the Halloween party? That was fun. Thought we were just meeting for dinner with a friend we haven't seen for a little while, but then we get there and it's full on Halloween party complete with costumes and bloody marys. Fun times with some great people. Is it sad that we left pretty early in search of food and for 'I've got to get up early for a training run?' Must be getting old hey... Check out our excellent costumes (thanks again to John for mine):