No real injuries, but generally feeling still in the glutes, quads, ITB and calf muscles. And after doing two long runs (14 & 16km) in consecutive weeks my old knee injury is starting to play up - hopefully this is more of a small niggle than an oncoming injury. Also I am still trying to shake off a cold that has been hanging around for over 2 weeks. But this was simply the first race of the season (after missing Puffing Billy), so it was really just a test to see where my current fitness was.
This will be the third season of the Salomon Trail Running Series for Elaine and myself. The first year we raced Short Course, last year we raced the Medium Course and this year we have stepped up to the Long Course. The longer races are definitely my weakness, but the off season is about trying to address our shortcomings. And if I want to race well at Mandurah 70.3 in November (my A race), I am going to need to run a fast 21.1km off the bike.
Race morning we were up early and had our usual breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast followed by a coffee. You are unlikely to find eggs on a nutritionists recommended 'before race' food list as they take a while to digest. But this is what we have before all our early morning training rides and runs and you don't want to change anything on race day. I like this as a breakfast because it is high in protein and dietary fat with the only carbs coming from the bread and very small amount of milk we have with our coffee (piccolos). Plus Elaine makes the bread and assures me that it has far less sugar than any of the loaves you buy from the supermarket. After waking up at 5:30am, I immediately start cooking breakfast, so we are finished eating around 5:50am (nearly 3 hours before race start). The only other thing we will consume before race start is water.
Leaving home at 6:30am, we arrived at the Studley Park Boathouse carpark at 7:15am. Perfect timing, as there are about 20 car spots left, all of which have gone by around 7:25am. We love being able to park very close to the Race Site, so it is definitely worth leaving home 30 minutes early to get that good park.
There is no such thing as typical Melbourne weather. It is always different and unpredictable. But there is presently no mistaking that we are in the middle of Winter this year and this morning was no exception. It was actually a reasonably nice day, but very cold. As I walked across the bridge to do a warmup I nearly slipped over as the wooden surface of the bridge was completely covered in a thin layer of ice. Usually I strip down for my warmup, but this time I was wearing my race t-shirt, a long sleeve running top, a hoodie, a jacket, warm gloves, beanie and thick tracksuit pants over my running shorts.
Warmups for longer races is all about getting loose. I usually prefer to do more drills than actual running as this will achieve the loosening up without tiring me out too much. However this morning my muscles wanted to remain stiff. I tried lots of stretching to no avail. My warmup lasted about 15 minutes and during that time I never felt like taking off any of the many layers I was wearing.
Of the 4 races in the Salomon Trail Running Series, Kew is not only the shortest, but also the least hilly and least technical. Notice that I did not say flat or non-technical, as it is neither of those.
The single track sections of the race are a fair way into the run, so I didn't feel a need to start off near the front. I was about 10 rows back, so probably in about position 50 of the 500 runners registered. Annoyingly at least half of the runners ahead of me were very slow, I'm not sure what part of self seeding they do not understand. Especially when the timing mats record when you go over the start line, so there is no advantage in moving further up the front than your ability dictates. Even though I wanted to start off very slowly, I still had to spend a lot of time in the first kilometre weaving in and out of people and sometimes running off the side along the grass rather than the far more even track. Luckily I was among similar paced runners by the first kilometre.
The early sections are mostly on trails where you can run 2 or 3 abreast. Initially the hills are more rolling than steep and you can hold a reasonable rhythm for the majority of the time. By about the 3km mark the leaders were well out of sight, but I could see a reasonable size group ahead and I was slowly leaving a gap to the group behind. As we continued I was slowly picking off runners as they dropped off the group ahead.
There a section about the 5km mark where the course doubles back on itself and you can see runners coming the other way. I was shocked to see just how far ahead the leaders were. After this is where the course starts to have more single track sections and starts introducing minor technical bits. With technical trail running not being my strong point, this is where I lost sight of the group ahead and now I it was more a series of individual runners spaced 10 to 15 metres apart.
We reached the first aid station around the 7km mark. I was wearing gloves due to the cold and it wasn't until this point that my fingers were no longer feeling the cold. Again the track was becoming more technical with very winding single track. It took a surprising amount of mental energy to navigate the course whilst also trying to run as fast as you could. Foolishly I passed a runner and now the gap to the next competitor was too big to be able to see them as we ran through heavily forested areas.
In general, the Kew course slowly gets more difficult as it goes. When you combine this with the fatigue of having already run half the course, nearly everybody finishes significantly slower than they started. The last 6km contains lots of technical single track and too many stairs. When you find a section that you can maintain a good rhythm it is almost like a recovery even though you are running faster, but towards the end of the race this sections are short lived.
Below are my kilometre splits. I didn't wear my heart rate monitor strap because it was showing stupidly high readings in the warmup and this would have really annoyed me during the race (unfortunate because I would have loved to see my HR readings for each split).
4m12s 4m20s 4m13s 4m10s 4m17s
4m22s 4m52s 4m31s 4m18s 4m35s
4m40s 4m44s 4m56s 4m44s 4m28s
As you can see, each 5km gets significantly slower. Part of this is due to the more difficult terrain, but most of it is due to lack of fitness. Especially seeing as I thought 4m12s for the first kilometre was very conservative. I don't think I could have gone any faster on the day, but early on I mentioned that this race was a test to see where my fitness was and I don't like the answer. My finishing time was 1h05m09s, 11th in category and 43rd overall (out of 460 finishers).
Elaine did well finishing in 1h49m31s. She has been training a fair bit less than me, so her fitness is even lower. She walked up all the hills, but overall she was very happy with efforts and she loves the Kew course (very picturesque).
Other club members also raced. Jonathan finished 12th in his age group with a 1h11m49s time and Evalin in 1h40m11s. Sal and Shaune (both of who I have recently coached) completed the Medium Course in 1h01m43s and 1h01m54s (they obviously ran together) - Shaune came 4th in her category.
