The last time I ran a City to Surf was three years ago, way back in 2007. At the time I had an SH1 start and hammered myself to a 57:06 finish which was all I had.
I entered the following year (2008), and had trained the house down. I’d been in Canada all July for a wedding and had been flogging myself to pieces doing hill reps at my in-laws house – they live on a fabulous country road, at the top of a steep 2km hill. Then about 10 days before the race pulled up sore after a HuRTS hills session in Rushcutters Bay and an hour later could barely walk. Stress fracture of the pelvis, 6 months off running.
I entered again last year (2009) and once again had been training solidly, this time for the Oxfam Trailwalker, my first ultra. Then a few days before City to Surf managed to do some quite acute damage to my Achilles tendon with all the bush running, and had to stop running for a few weeks altogether. Missed it again.
So I’ve been dying to get back out there and give C2S another go. It’s the biggest footrace in the world and one of the best events the city of Sydney has to offer. This year I had no idea how I would do timewise. Also very little clue as to how to pace it, I couldn’t really remember the route very well. I managed to get a preferred start this year, it’s been under 55mins at City to Surf to get a preferred start in recent years, so my only goal was to go sub 55 and properly earn the place.
On possibly the most beautiful sunny winter day of the year, I met Wes at the top of my driveway and we jogged over the Harbour Bridge together to the start. First time ever in the preferred start and I like the VIP treatment of being able to push through the masses - 80 thousand entrants this year – and warm up on William Street in front of the start line with what looked like a very select bunch. Soon they closed things off and had us line up and I shuffled into position near Wes and Reid, as well as a bloke dressed as Superman and a guy wearing nothing but speedos and bright pink paint over his entire body.
At this point I’m thinking that my only tactic is to not get caught up in the crazy rush of blood to the head that infuses everyone at the start of this race. Barrelling the first 500 metres slightly downhill at 3minute pace to keep up with the crowd is a sure way to blow the heart rate and legs before the race has really even started, so the idea was to keep things easy and run within myself for the first 6 odd km until heartbreak hill. After the hill I could start to wind things up a bit, while still leaving something in the tank, then at 10km just go hard, knowing that it’s mostly downhill or flat from 12km onward.
Of course the gun went off and everyone barrelled down William Street like they had the hounds of hell on their tails! I tried to just relax and run at a comfortably hard pace and once we got onto New South Head Road I was passing the people who’d blown themselves from the get-go. It was good to see an Elvis impersonator in a white spangled bodysuit on the back of a flatbed ute singing Credence Clearwater Revival. Fairly typical sight for a Sunday morning...
Up the next hill from Rushcutters into Edgecliffe I kept it easy and started methodically passing the second wave of people who’d fired off like a rocket at the start. Down the other side I focused on letting my legs go and using the free speed (I’m still not great at the downhills, but all the bush running over the last year or so has made me immeasurably better than I was) and I did pass a lot of people that way. On it went in much the same way, I has a comfortably hard pace and just remembered Reid’s words that if you wanted to break 55 mins you had to hit 10km at 39mins or under.
Heartbreak Hill came and went. I tried to strike a balance so that I wasn’t dropping my pace too much, but also not blowing my heart rate too high. I didn’t see the halfway clock for some reason, so no idea of my time at the top of the hill. I had the new Garmin on, but pacing meant nothing for me in this race. With so many ups and downs, it’s impossible to maintain any consistant pace. I was feeling pretty strong over the back half and flowed over the hills without smashing myself until I came through the 10km clock at spot-on 38:30. Good news by Reidy’s “rule of thumb”! Time to pick things up.
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I pushed a bit harder for the next km, then tried to gain some more time flying down the long hill into North Bondi. At the bottom of the hill (with still about 1.5km to go) everyone around me took off like it was a sprint finish. I knew I didn’t have the legs to kick for that long, so I didn’t try to go with them, but did pick up the pace to as hard as I thought I could reasonably hold. Was now hurting.
Clearly the other half dozen guys near me didn’t have the legs to kick for that long either, as I passed most of them by the roundabout turnaround, they'd sprinted way too early and paid the price. Then it was a case of seeing how fast I could manage for the last 400m or so along the beachfront to the finish line. Mike Conway screaming from the sideline certainly helped me pick it up a notch, as did noticing that the clock was still in the 52 minute zone, but advancing fast towards 53. I never dreamed that I’d be anywhere near the 52s, but now that I was so close I was damn sure going to try to nail it.
Crossed the line for a Gun time of 52.54
Net time 52.42
Place 265 out of 67,979 official finishers
Which apparently put me at 99.61%
After kicking around for 20 minutes or so chatting to all the HuRTS boys (they were all there, it was like a Tuesday session with 80 thousand extras) and throwing back a few Gatorades (I didn’t drink at all on the run), I realised that I must have missed Wes for the run back. I wanted to get an extra 20km in for a 34km day in total, so started to jog away from the finish line when I ran into Pete and Smolly who were running back into the city themselves. Perfect! Good company, and they were guaranteed to keep me honest - Smolly was only a few weeks away from flying to Canada and the US for two Ironmans, two weeks apart. We had a really enjoyable run and chat back into town, then the boys took off and I went solo over the bridge and out to Cremorne Point and back to finish my 20km. Slowed down markedly by the last few km, but was happy to just get it done. I even ran into our marriage celebrant from almost 5 years ago who was conducting a ceremony down at Kirribilli!
Crossed the line for a Gun time of 52.54
Net time 52.42
Place 265 out of 67,979 official finishers
Which apparently put me at 99.61%
After kicking around for 20 minutes or so chatting to all the HuRTS boys (they were all there, it was like a Tuesday session with 80 thousand extras) and throwing back a few Gatorades (I didn’t drink at all on the run), I realised that I must have missed Wes for the run back. I wanted to get an extra 20km in for a 34km day in total, so started to jog away from the finish line when I ran into Pete and Smolly who were running back into the city themselves. Perfect! Good company, and they were guaranteed to keep me honest - Smolly was only a few weeks away from flying to Canada and the US for two Ironmans, two weeks apart. We had a really enjoyable run and chat back into town, then the boys took off and I went solo over the bridge and out to Cremorne Point and back to finish my 20km. Slowed down markedly by the last few km, but was happy to just get it done. I even ran into our marriage celebrant from almost 5 years ago who was conducting a ceremony down at Kirribilli!
Staggered through the door just in time to get Sarah’s phone call to drive back to Bondi and pick her and Michelle up after they’d finished. It was quite cool to drive back there and see the swaths of people milling around Bondi. Most importantly I managed to get Sarah to buy me a vegan “meat” pie from Funky Pies, perfect recovery food for the long sit in traffic home...
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