Charles Kay Hill

The start of a Terrigal Trotters 10km Time Trial

Terrigal Trotters has a 10km Time Trial at the end of every month and alternates between a "flat" and "hilly" course.  "Flat" is a bit of a misnomer, as there are some hills, but it's certainly flat relative to the "hilly" course.  The latter has some significant early hills, but the grand-daddy of them all, Charles Kay Hill, comes soon after the 7km mark and climbs 75m over one kilometre.  That doesn't sound too bad, but after 7km of hard running, including the early hills, it's almost impossible to maintain any sort of momentum.  A helter-skelter descent, testing arthritic knees, bad backs and shoe grip, with a little over one kilometre to go, hardly makes up for the grind of the preceding ascent.
 
The Charles Kay Hill 10km Time Trial was scheduled for this morning at 6:00am, so I got to Terrigal at 5:20am and made sure I was well warmed-up, with an easy 4km through the darkened streets of Wamberal beforehand.  Running a race against your friends once a month makes for some longstanding rivalries.  I think all Trotters who regularly run the Time Trials have a pretty good idea of who they want to beat, and who wants to beat them.  Results are scanned and mental notes made.

Part of the dreaded Charles Kay hill

Based on my inadequate recent training background, and my mediocre City to Surf Fun Run and Six at Six performances, I had no expectation of running a good time this morning.  I still need another couple of weeks of solid training to get back within range of my best recent 10km times.  I did, however, expect to see signs of continuing improvement.

The longer warm-up certainly made me feel better for the first kilometre or two, and although I didn't feel I was running fast, I wasn't that far behind several of my old rivals.  I didn't expect to catch them, and was wary of forcing the pace, having done little fast running of late.  I resolved to settle into a pace that would get me comfortably to half-way and then see how I was going.  Perhaps the worst part of this particular course is the "foothills" that are encountered in the middle stages.  They cost you momentum, and it's hard not to think about the looming Charles Kay Hill.

Trotters socialise after a 10km Time Trial from a
few years back

As it turned out, my pace judgment proved to be about right and I ran steadily to bottom of the big hill.  From there it was a struggle up the hill, and then as fast as I dared down the hill to the finish.  My time of 44:18 (Trotters has calculated the course is equivalent to 10.4km on the "flat" course) was about what I expected, and my position relative to my rivals improved on two weeks ago.  My age-graded points score was about 800, which was OK, but a long way from the 900 I need for a sub-3:00 hour marathon.

Nevertheless, I do feel I'm on the way back to fitness and this hard run was a necessary step along the way.  I'm a great believer in hard running and hills as a way of building speed and this morning's race ticked both boxes.  There are no short-cuts, and there have to be runs and races where you perform below par relative to your benchmarks (aka friendly rivals).  Avoiding these runs and races just lengthens the process of regaining fitness.  The trick is to keep everything in perspective and remind yourself that things may well be different at next month's Time Trial.

Day off

Delivering the pre-race briefing before the 2012 Great
North Walk 100s trail races

I never did manage to get out for a run or walk today, but I doubt that has done me any harm, given that I was stiff and sore last night after the City to Surf.  My right arch has been occasionally painful, but it's hard to know whether it is any worse for the weekend's running.
I was planning an easy day anyway, but the opening at 6:00am of entries for the Great North Walk 100s (GNW100s) trail races, for which I'm the Race Director, left me with a lot of processing and a reason to stay at my desk. 

What was already going to be a busy day, wasn't helped by a power cut in late afternoon, and I still have many entries to review as I update this blog.  Of course, we could pay for online entry processing, but given the small size of the field we'll accept (200 entries), the cost per entry is excessive.  Additionally, the extreme nature of the event, I like to try and review the entry qualifications of each applicant before accepting them.

The event is a labour of love, so I don't mind the extra work.  This will be the 9th running, and although there are times I regret ever having started it, I generally think it has been a worthwhile project for my retirement.  The relish the participants show for the challenge and the enthusiasm with which my Terrigal Trotters clubmates support the event is very rewarding.

While I was working full-time, I seldom had the time to help at community or sporting events.  Now I'm retired, I have the opportunity to make up for those years, and I'm lucky enough to have a number of running-related activities that I enjoy helping, including organising the GNW100s.

City to Surf

Waiting for the City to Surf start
  

It was a good day, and a frustrating day.  I journeyed into Sydney this morning for the annual 14km City to Surf Fun Run with my fellow Terrigal Trotters in a convoy of two minibuses after a 5:00am pick-up.  We had a very enjoyable day, along with 85,000 others, in excellent Sydney winter weather - cool to start, but sunny and warm by mid-morning.

Most of my club-mates ran very well, exceeding or meeting their goal times, and I was pleased for them.  It's not an easy race, and you have to prepare well and hang in there, to get a good time.  I don't think I did either particularly well.  Of course, I've only been back running for two weeks and only done any significant training this week, so I can rationalise my 63:03 time (4:30 mins/km) as about right for my fitness.  However, I didn't enjoy it.  From the start, where we stood around for over an hour in the cool morning air, I did not feel like I was travelling well.  My sore right arch hurt a bit, and my running form was poor, maybe partly due to the tempo run yesterday that left me a little stiff and sore.

Heading through the tunnel

I steadily lost ground to those around me early on, and kept telling myself that once I warmed up I would catch them on the hills later.  This never really happened.  I was still feeling rough up the major climb at half-way, and then just tried to relax on the run in to iconic Bondi Beach.  I never checked my watch en route, and was a little worried that my time would be slower than the 70 minutes required to qualify for the Red Start next year.  However, as it turned out, I was well inside that time, but I never threatened my usual Trotters' rivals, who all ran very well.

Bondi Beach

I don't think there's any way of avoiding these tough comeback runs, really.  You somehow have to get from doing nothing to good form and somewhere between the two are going to be some runs where you feel frustrated and unfit.  I just have to keep my eye on the main goal and not stress about these runs.

Some long easy runs would help me get fit more quickly, but I'm worried that my arch injury is still causing some pain and it might be unwise to test it further at the moment.  I will have an easy day tomorrow and then decide what is wise training for the balance of the week.

Fun Runs

I preferred the smaller Fun Runs with uncrowded
starts and a good chance of prizes and/or glory

Tomorrow is the annual City to Surf 14km Fun Run and there are more than thirty Trotters making the journey to join 85,000 other runners for the run from Sydney to Bondi Beach.  I entered some time ago, before I injured my arch, and a few weeks ago had given up on the idea of running.  However, the arch has definitely improved in the last two weeks and I will join my club-mates tomorrow.  This will be only the second time I have run City to Surf, and I never ran it whilst in my running prime.

I always considered I lacked the basic speed necessary to do well in the mass participation Fun Runs, though I did surprise myself (and a few other people) once with a third place in the 1981 13km Melbourne Exacto Team Trot (39:28).  Even with an "elite" start, and I rarely got those, you had to run very fast from the start to avoid being swamped by runners who then slowed dramatically after a few hundred metres.  Without an elite start, you had to line up for an hour or more to get a good spot on the starting line, thus ruling out any kind of a warm-up or last-minute toilet visit, neither conducive to a good performance.  Then, if you dealt with these issues and got away well at the gun, you would see "bandits" pouring out of the side streets ahead of you during the first kilometre.  Just about the last straw for me was an event (I think it was one of the old Sun Superuns that went over the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne), where I had managed to get a reasonable start then saw one of my club-mates, a better-performed 10km runner than me, appear from a side alley about 500 metres after the start and join the field about fifty metres in front of me.  I never did catch him.

I developed an aversion to the mass participation Fun Runs, though was always happy to run in the minor ones where the start wasn't a problem and there was a chance of prizes and/or glory.  A bigger fish in a smaller pond.

The City to Surf isn't high on my priority list as a runner, but it will be an enjoyable day with my club-mates, and it will be inspiring to see so many people out running on what promises to be a beautiful Sydney winter morning.  Not having any expectations about my performance, and happily resigned to taking it easy in the early kilometres, I will just cruise and be entertained.

Terrigal Trotters generally schedule an "easier" Saturday morning run when there is a big running event the next day, such as the City to Surf.  This morning's, "Marg's Meander", barely qualified as easy.  Early on there is a lung-busting hill that really blows away any cobwebs, and later in the 11.5km course, there are a few smaller hills to keep you honest.  I started gently so as not to aggravate my right arch injury and then, after the first hill, just tried to maintain a comfortable tempo pace whilst avoiding the temptation to chase the runners I could see ahead.  The latter became academic after 8km as my lack of training caught up with me.

I finished feeling very tired, unfit, coughing and out-of-breath.  About the best thing that could be said about the run was that my sore arch seemed to handle it OK.  I have had a bit of a cough the last few days, so I hope I'm just dealing with a minor cold.  On the other hand, because I associated it with a developing pattern of headaches, I stopped taking asthma medication a few weeks ago and I definitely felt I was wheezing a bit on the hills and later in the run.  Of course, it's probably just the cold and lack of fitness, but like all serious runners, there's a lot of self-analysis going on.

Another running anecdote

No training to report for today.  Instead, a day spent trying to detect pain in my arch whenever I walked around.  There's barely anything to note, but I'll stick with the plan to leave it for another few days before walking any distance.

I thought I would share another old running anecdote.  Below is an article I wrote that appeared in the June 1986 Victorian Marathon Club Newsletter about an event I had run while travelling in the US.

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ST VALENTINE'S DAY DEBACLE

After an hour's drive in gale-force winds and heavy showers we arrived at the apartment in Sunset, the suburb next to Golden Gate Park, where Australian friends Martin and Veronica were staying, and then we all journeyed by tram into downtown San Francisco.  We arrived at the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero 45 minutes before the scheduled 6:00pm race start and entered (with the exception of Veronica) for the St Valentine's Day Striders Fun Run.




Out for a jog in San Francisco more recently.

We were looking forward to competing on the four mile heart-shaped course through the downtown area - particularly Martin who had recently performed well as a guest in the Canadian World Cross Country Trial (where he distinguished himself by running the last half with his gloves stuffed down the front of his jocks, after deciding that frostbitten hands were preferable to risking the family lineage) - but wondered how the organisers were going to police the course.  Not only was it Friday night peak hour, but also the start of a long weekend and it was going to be dark.

In the Race Director’s preamble he informed us that this was a “stride”, not a “race”, and those running too fast would find that they beat the marshals to the corners (of which there were fourteen) – sigh!  Our sentiments were obviously shared by other “runners” among the 100 entries, who included Laurie Binder, former winner of Sydney’s City to Surf, but not by other “striders” who included people dressed in street clothes and even in oilskins.




The crowded streets of downtown San Francisco where the
1986 St Valentines Day Run was held
(I can't remember the route).

The route was complicated so the three of us each grabbed a map to carry.  The course began by crossing the busy six-lane Embarcadero.  A couple of officials (they were the last I saw for a long time) pushed the pedestrian crossing button, dashed out into the road waving at the traffic to stop, and signalled the starter to begin the race.  Miraculously, nobody died at this first obstacle, but the traffic had another excellent opportunity as the participants strung out along the gloomy main road running with their backs to the oncoming cars.  Martin was fortunate (and fit) and found himself sharing the lead with two runners who knew where they were going.  I was less fortunate (and less fit), and being 100 metres off the pace, lost sight of them in the dark and finally had to slow at an intersection to wait for the following bunch.  When they arrived, I discovered they knew as much as me, but were less well-equipped – no maps.  From that point, I was the “Pied Piper”, leading with my map, and shouting “Right on Powell”, “Left on Taylor”, etc., as we dashed across intersections and roads, dodging cars and cable-cars – it was becoming good fun.

Many runners got lost or cut the course short.  Barb saw one runner miss a turn and continue towards the Pacific.  The organisers kindly included some of San Francisco’s steepest hills as well as a flight of over 100 steps and the race finished down the precipitous California Street, with cross-roads every 100 metres – no sprint finishes.  Martin, Barb and I all found ourselves just running in with whoever we happened to be with at the time.  The Finish was “low key” to say the least.  We turned the corner into Justin Herman Plaza, saw an official standing there all on his own, asked him where the finish line was, and were informed we had just crossed it.

Later, some refreshments were provided and a draw held for some nice prizes.  A unique and amusing experience was capped for the evening when I won a bottle of champagne and two fine crystal glasses.