That's how far I drove in 12 hours to go and run a marathon - albeit a very lovely marathon in Mudgee, about 3 hours northwest of Sydney. I have to question my own sanity sometimes. I got up at 2:30am on Sunday morning, drove 3 hours and was on the startline at Mudgee for 7am.
As you'll have read from previous posts, this was always one of those touch and go ones for me. I struggled in the second half of Wagga, straining my left knee ligament and also a strain on my left soleus muscle. However it cleared up well during the week and felt OK. However the reality was that it was still not better, as the first 2kms of the marathon told me.
In fact, the first 10kms were really quite tough, the reality of getting last week's marathon out of the legs. However from 10-32kms, things were actually OK, and I really started to enjoy it. I deliberately set out pretty slow as I have one eye on the Glasshouse 100km in 3 weeks. The plan was to do around 1hr 50min splits, coming in at around 3hr 40min. All went well for the first half and the pace was very comfortable, however at 32kms, the injury and the effects of last week really started to catch-up with me.
At 32kms the wheels came off again and mentally, the next 5kms were probably the toughest 5kms I've run. I was a little disappointed with myself as I felt that I lost the mental battle somewhat. I resigned myself to walking up some of the hills, when really I should have dug deep and run. I guess it's a fine balance though, given that I was running with an injury or two - but personally I feel like I let myself down a bit on this section. However at 37kms I had a word with myself and managed to polish the final 5kms off OK coming home in a personal worst 3hrs 46mins. OK, so in the grand scheme of things 6 minutes slower than I was going to run, but I know where those 6 minutes went, and I'll toughen up a bit more ahead of Glasshouse. I'll also hopefully have the injuries cleared as well.
Good to see some of the other guys from Wagga Wagga, and also to Anth who ran a PB, top work on the back of last week's very challenging run. Looking back I didn't realise it, but I've done a race every weekend for the last 5 weeks, 3 marathons and 2 shorter 'sprint' races of 7kms and 14kms. The body is somewhat tired now, so I'll be having a rest of 3-4 days, before some light running towards the end of the week and the weekend.
In terms of where I'm at for the MDS, things are looking pretty good. I wanted to get to a stage where I run back-to-back marathons, and I've achieved this and the body actually feels OK post run (just the niggles I mentioned). In the grand scheme of things, 6 minutes doesn't matter and I'm happier about the fact that I've done the back to back's and in respectable times too. So a bit of rest, a few lighter weeks of about 50kms and then Glasshouse House!
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7 days isn't much of a break between marathons it has to be said! During the 2nd (picking two round the dales with 8000ft of climbing between them was probably a bad move ;) ) I felt the first marathon most when trying to keep a decent motion pushing up the steeper hills.
The time on my second was better by 30 minutes (and they were fairly equal marathons I think) but thats more that my first one was pretty poor than the second one was good!
Injury pending you should be fine for Glasshouse, no heroics and run your own race! You'll be fine!
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