65:53

Yeah.

For the Bridge Run, I grossly underestimated how fast I could do it. But for City2Surf, I thought I had a much better handle on things. So that apprehension about breaking 70 minutes... that was real. Apparently not?

Maybe it was the adrenalin that comes with running with 75,000 people. Maybe it was the fact that I really, really, really had to urinate for all 65 minutes and 53 seconds. Maybe it was the fact that I just wanted the damned thing to be over with already. Whatever it was, I got under 70 minutes. Easily. And now I'm left to wonder if I could break 65 minutes... and I think I can. Guess we'll have to wait for next year.

Until then? I think it's back to the Bridge Run in September, and my newest goal: breaking 40 minutes.

And now we play the waiting game

Yesterday was great.

The previous night's sleep, during which I seemingly woke up every half hour? Not so much. The 6:45am wake up call? No way. Standing idly around before the race for an hour, in the chilly morning air, waiting to start? Ummmmm, no. Realizing about 20 minutes before the race that I really had to piss, except that there was no way I had enough time to wade through a sea of people to the toilets and back? Absolutely not.

But from the atmosphere in the crowd at the starting line, to the moment the starting gun went off, to a band proclaiming "Freak you, I won't do what you tell me!" on top of the Golden Sheaf, to running along the harbour in Rose Bay, to the excruciating climb up Heartbreak Hill, to the 4km descent to Bondi Beach, to sprinting through to the finish line... well, I actually had fun.*

*That fun continued post race,** as a group of us headed to a bar and downed several drinks that (a) went down FAR too easily and (b) went to my head FAR too quickly.

**The fun ceased shortly after the bar, as Yogi and I walked the three kilometers -- all uphill -- from Bondi Beach to Bondi Junction. With 75,000 racers (plus plenty more supporters and onlookers) descending upon the area, all traffic had come to a standstill, and all buses were absolutely packed. So we walked. And no, that was not fun.

Post-race walk aside, the exception to my fun during the race may have been my need to urinate. For throughout the entire 14 kilometers, I had to go, bad. Real bad. Did that help me run faster? It actually may have. The problem is, I don't know exactly what my time was. At least not quite yet. You see, I finished 1 hour and 24 minutes after the starting gun went off, but I didn't actually start until well after then. And the official results aren't released until tomorrow.

I'm pretty confident I did sub-70 minutes, which would quite please me. Did I reach 65? I think that's a stretch... but I think there's a chance. I'll find out for sure soon enough.

Can I break the 70 minute barrier?

In my last post on the City2Surf race, I boldly targeted a time of 65 minutes, thinking that 70 was well within reach. Well, in case you're hearing some beeping right now, that's the sound of me backing off of that proclamation. For after a few runs in the past several days that I've kinda timed, I've realized that 65 minutes is a bit of a pipe dream, and even 70 may be pushing it.

In preparation for tomorrow, I've been doing some runs home from work, which you can see here: over the Harbour Bridge and by the Opera House, through the city and Hyde Park, into Surry Hills and then a long last straightaway by Moore Park, past the Sydney Football Stadium and the Sydney Cricket Ground. Not a bad route for the scenery, and at just about 10km with a few good hills, I think my conditioning is there. The speed? That's another question.

I'm pumped for tomorrow, although I'm not entirely sure what to expect. But if nothing else, it should be fun.

You can almost spell "fun" with "run"... but you see, not completely

It all started about this time last year. Maybe a bit earlier.

First the seed was planted in my head. It began to percolate. The intrigue built. And only after I had fully sold myself on the idea of running in Sydney's City2Surf, I finally realized that I'd be out of town when it was being held. As a consolation prize, you may remember, I did the Bridge Run in September.

This year, however, I'm there. The weekend is clear, August 9 is circled on my calendar and I'm fully prepared to run this bad boy.

What is City2Surf? It's a 14 kilometer "fun run" -- as if calling it that actually makes running 14 kilometers (and change) any less excruciating than we all know that it will be -- which starts in the center of Sydney and ends at Bondi Beach. Some people take it seriously, others use it as an excuse for a nice stroll, others get dressed up in costumes.* (I guess that's the "fun" part?) Either way, everyone suffers through Heartbreak Hill, a two kilometer, steep ascent about halfway through the course.**

*Last year, a guy dressed as Superman sprinted out at the start of the race and ended up pacing the field for the first few kilometers.

**I've DRIVEN this hill and been exhausted by the time I've made it to the top. You go up, up, up, think you're there, turn a corner, and then there's another freaking hill staring you in the face. It's evil.

Here's a nice video from the organizers:

No, it's no marathon, let alone a triathlon; I'll let the crazies have their fun doing those. Instead, this is merely a distance that will test me without killing me.

So! I have 12 more days until the race, and with the Blue Mountains and Auckland well and truly in the rear view mirror, I've started to get serious with some training and have slowly been increasing my running distances. Went for a lovely 13.5km run on Saturday that damn near killed me. So that's fun.

The goal for a time? 65 minutes. I'd be happy with anything under 70 -- that's five minutes per kilometer on the nose -- but why not push myself? If I could do the Bridge Run last year in 42 minutes, and that's about 4:40 per kilometer, well, with an extra 5km of maintaining the same speed and that beast of a hill thrown in, it's gonna be close.

More to come in the days leading up to the race, and some sort of post mortem afterwards.

Woe is freaking me

The title of this post is the line I used in an email to some friends yesterday, and it's really quite apt in capturing the essence of my last 48 hours. Consider the following:

Monday, circa 3:00pm
I duck out of work for about an hour to watch the Sox, down 3-1 in Game 7 of the ALCS, tease me in the eighth and ninth innings and ultimately lose to the Rays.* Not to take anything away from the Rays, for they are a really good team, but that's a game that the Sox should have and could have won. And probably would have won a year ago.

*Somewhere, a higher power is saying: "Let me get this straight. You have two teams. They both made it deep into the playoffs. This is a good thing. Yet you’re bitching about the chance of them meeting up in the World Series??!? Fine, you’ll get nothing and you’ll like it." As I've said from the beginning, I brought this upon myself; I deserve whatever comes to me. Including this.

Monday, circa 3:20pm
Back in the office for maybe 20 minutes, my agency's managing director calls an impromptu meeting to give us the lovely news that my client is going to another agency. That would be the client that I'm 100% resourced on. Shortly, they will not be with the agency. A nonexistent client means a nonexistent job. More on this surely to follow.

Tuesday, circa the entire day
No one knows what's going on with our client leaving or how it's going to play out. All we know for sure is that jobs will be lost. Including mine, potentially. Nothing will happen in the immediate few days or weeks, but it will happen, perhaps even within the next month or two. So throughout the day, there's absolutely something in the air in the office. And circa the entire day, I'm just annoyed.

Tuesday, circa 6:30pm
My normal five minute wait for a bus turns into 20 minutes. Under normal circumstances, this is an annoyance. On this day, this is infuriating.

Tuesday, circa 7:40pm
Halfway through a run to blow off some steam, about as far as I can possibly get from my apartment, I step into a pothole and sprain my ankle. With no way to call anyone or money for a bus or taxi, I proceed to limp the two miles back home.

Now it's Wednesday. I woke up to an ankle that has ballooned, as if someone inserted a golf ball into it last night. I cannot walk, I cannot put any weight on it. So no work today. Instead it was off to the doctor, who's sending me out for an x-ray, because it could be broken. I'm on Forest Gump-style crutches, and it's pouring outside.

Yeah. Woe is freaking me.

The camera, it hates me

They said they'd make photos and video available to me. And I was actually looking forward to that, to have some kind of keepsake of my run.

And yesterday, the email came: we have pictures available for you to view! So I excitedly clicked on the link. And that's when I fully appreciated the wording of their email. Not "we have pictures of you to view." Oh no: "We have pictures available for you to view." Because here's the one picture that they've offered to sell me:


Great. Fantastic. Am I down there, somewhere on the bridge? Maybe, but I doubt it; I think it's just a photo that they offer to everyone. Meanwhile, a friend from work has five photos available to purchase, all of which were actually, you know, of her. She didn't just have one option, in which she may have looked like crap. No -- she had five freaking options.

Then there came the video of the finish line. Any more of a keepsake, this hardly is. But click here to view the video. I'm about 15 seconds into it, in light blue shorts, on the left. Mindblowing video! Yep, definitely gonna be holding onto this to show to my grandkids!

41:54

In the words of the immortal Brian Collins, boom goes the dynamite!

I murdered that race. Murdered it. Forty-one minutes and fifty-four seconds. That's over eight minutes better than the rough goal I'd set for myself, over three minutes better than the stretch goal. Finished 726th out of 10,600 people, and 197th out of 1,131 men between 20 and 29.

Most amazingly of all, I did it with relative ease. Felt really good, from start to finish, and I think I could have done it even faster. But as probably generally happens with these races, I spent the first few kilometers weaving around and passing slower runners,* and it probably wasn't until the 2km mark that I was really able to get any pace going. And even then, I was pretty surprised to find myself passing people for pretty much the whole race, right through to the end.

*The race had a self-seeding system, meaning you're supposed to line up at the start based on how quickly you think you'll finish. So after I positioned myself near the front of the group that was aiming to finish between 45 minutes and one hour, it was a bit frustrating to see people who were WALKING, or kids who clearly were always going to burn out after a kilometer, starting ahead of me. Then again, for most of my pre-teen and early teen years, I ran each of the Fourth of July 5km races in Pacific Palisades, and I definitely used to be one of those kids. So I guess I understand.


But it was a fun race, a beautiful spring day,* and a great course: from North Sydney, up over the Harbour Bridge, by the Opera House, into the city, looping through the Botanical Gardens and finishing back at the Opera House.

*The day before this, Sydney absurdly had its hottest day of 2008. This includes January and February when it actually was, you know, summer.

They apparently take pictures and video of us on the course. Once I get those, and assuming I don't look like death, I'll post them on here sometime soon.

Where to go from here? Is there a next step? I really want to do the City 2 Surf run next August, assuming I'm not visiting the States again at the same time. And then for the Sydney Running Festival next year, maybe it's on to the half marathon (although I think that's a bit of a stretch) or possibly setting my eyes on doing the Bridge Run in under 40 minutes. That may be the real stretch.

Gonna run now

One random day in June of last year, I was overcome with the urge to run. I have no idea why, but I just felt like I needed to do it. So I ran. And in a development that I'm sure would be absolutely inconceivable to the Andy of two years ago, I kept running. Not so much a Forrest Gump-style of "kept running", but more of an every other day kind of "kept running."

Strangely enough, it felt good. Well, let's clarify that. For some people swear that they love to run. Love the feeling it gives them. Something about endorphins. Me? When I'm in the act, I absolutely despise it. It's awful, every single step of it. But I push myself, and I force myself to get through it. Because I know what awaits me at the end of the run is a sense of accomplishment and knowing that I've done something that's good for me. And it's that that makes me feel good, that keeps me at it every few times a week.

As I've run more, the thought of running an official race has intrigued me. Not so much to run it on any sort of a super competitive level, but more so just to do it, to be part of something bigger than just me out there in a park by myself, you know, running. And late last year, someone told me about Sydney's City2Surf, the world's biggest "fun run" (bit of a contradiction of terms, in my own estimation), which happens every August.

On the spot, I determined that that was going to be it. City2Surf! I was actually excited. For it's a beautiful course (as you might be able to guess from the name, it starts in the city and ends at the beach), and at 13km and with a hill dubbed "Heartbreak Hill" in the middle, it would push my limits a bit.

But then, calamity. Or not so much. More of just your run-of-the-mill conflict. For I realised after booking my trip to the US that I'd be out of town for the race. But as much as I wanted to run it, I wasn't about to reschedule the trip. So there that went.

But all was not lost. Because just over a month later, Sydney is having its annual Sydney Running Festival, a day with a few races and headlined by its marathon. The marathon, I'm not doing. The half marathon... no, not doing that. But the bridge run, a 9km course from North Sydney, across the Harbour Bridge and ending at the Opera House... that I'm doing. And should be able to do it relatively easily. I think.

So this Sunday, it's on. How fast will I be able to do it? I'm actually not so sure, because when running casually, I don't keep close tabs on how quickly I run. So it'll be interesting to see what time I can do the course in. At the moment, the loose goal is 50 minutes, which I think is pretty achievable. And 45 minutes would be great. Any faster? Probably not gonna happen. But we shall see!

Results to be posted here next week.