Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - I ran for a reason

Last Sunday I ran the 14km Run for a Reason race in Perth. This is the third year that the race has been held, and it provides Perth with a second fun run option outside of the City to Surf in August.

This was the first time I have run this course, and only the second time I have run any formal running event. The first was the 2009 City to Surf, a 12km course, which was about 18 months after I got into running. In early 2008, I had plenty of stamina for low and moderate intensity exercise, but couldn't have run even 2km.

The City to Surf race was the best run of my life. I ran faster than I had been running in training (averaging about 11.4km / hour), I loved the atmosphere and the thrill of running on roads that were closed for the event, and the 63 minutes of running time just flew by.

I don't know how it ended up being 2.5 years from that race to this one (injuries had something to do with it, but not all), but  I'm glad to have finally done a second formal run.

Despite that, if the City to Surf face was my best run ever, it has to be said that this may have been one of my worst. After getting up at 6am and leaving for the train station at 6.30am, my plans to arrive in good time were thwarted by a lack of shuttle buses from the city train station to the start of the race (about a 5 minute bus ride). There were thousands of people queuing for buses and no where near enough to get us all shuttled across in a timely manner.

By the time I got to the starting grounds, it was 7.45am and the race started at 8am. I still needed to brave the bathroom queues and throw my bag at the bag collection area, and it ended up being 8.01am as I came out of the toilets. The first running group was just heading off, and I was meant to be in the second group.

Suffice to say, by the time I made it across the starting line, I was pretty frazzled. In fact, my anxiety system was firing at full speed. The plan to stagger the start by speed groups also fell apart, as many people were in the same position as me and hadn't made the start line for their allocated group. Conversely, a number of walkers seemed to have set off with the first, 'fastest' group, so my first few kilometers were spent trying to overtake walkers whilst being overtaken by faster runners trying to get out to the front.

I ran the first 2 kilometers at an average of 12km / hour, which is about 2 km / hour faster than the speed I was aiming to average for the full race. I knew I was going out too fast but it wasn't until 10 minutes in that I managed to moderate that down.

Indeed, after the stressful start, it took me until the 8km mark to settle into a steady pace and actually feel at home with the running and my breathing. I had expected the first half of the race to be easy and the second half more challenging, but it was definitely the other way around.

I'm in this picture, but so are about a hundred other people...

I also found that my usual strategy of running on an empty stomach, something resulting from all of my exercise being done first thing in the morning, didn't generalise so well to the slightly longer run with the travel time before hand. I felt quite nauseous in the last 2 kilometers, and I think that can be blamed on lack of fuel. Lesson learnt: if I want to run more than 10 - 12km, I need to eat, not just drink, first!

Despite these challenges, the run could also be called one of the best in my life. I have never run 14km before, in race form or otherwise, with my longest previous race being 13km. The atmosphere was great, and the route was a good one. Cheerleaders and music along the course were pretty fun too. Most importantly, I did run it, despite it being hard. I'm pretty proud of that.

In the end, I even hit the time I was hoping for, averaging 10.12 km / hour to finish in 1 hour and 23 minutes (plus 8 seconds, if we're being specific). Clearly I ran some kilometers pretty slowly, given the speedy start!

The rest of Sunday was spent in a semi-exhausted state, eating a whole batch (!) of pikelets, and reading in the sunshine. By Tuesday I was pondering when I could next run a race, and I'm already thinking alone the lines of "Just another 7km and you could run a half marathon!".

These pikelets, with yoghurt and thawed frozen strawberries.

Picture many more pikelets over the course of the day.

If you're a runner, do you run races regularly or are you like me and pretty inconsistent? What would be your best and worst runs?

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