This is another marathon blog penned by Geoffrey.
Please contact me if you are interested in knowing more about anything related to this Marathon event.
Over to Geoffrey …
Ten days before the Melbourne Marathon I participated in a 5km race – an event that I have run many times before. Just 500m from the finished I suddenly felt totally out of breath and had to stop. This had never happened before as I wasn’t pushing anything like 100% so it was a little concerning. Was my fitness that poor leading up to a mayor marathon event? After a minute slouched over my knees, I jogged my way slowly to the finish feeling poorly and despondent. Half an hour later and now feeling much recovered I looked at my watch which records a lot of data about the run. It clearly indicated that my heart rate suddenly spiked to 215 bpm for around 3 minutes which had caused my ”out of breath” moment. The following days I noticed that I didn’t feel great for my final training runs so I made the sensible decision on race day to take it easy and to make an appointment with a cardiologist to discuss the incident…
Melbourne turned on a perfect morning for the early 6:30am gun time. The marathon field was around 14,000 but with the Half Marathon, 10km and 5km events the total number of runners was around 50,000. The marathon course is a scenic, predominantly flat loop through the city’s iconic landmarks. The race starts outside the Tennis Centre and finishes with a memorable lap inside the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). You run around Albert Park Lake (the same route as the Formula One Australian Grand Prix) and there is a long out and back stretch from St Kilda to Port Melbourne. The finish inside the spectacular MCG is truly memorable.
I stuck with the 4hr 30min pace group for the most part and managed near perfect splits to finish 4:29:32. I ran like it was my regular Sunday training run with no pressure to push myself. I found that by running a bit conservatively you get to enjoy and appreciate the event so much more and the recovery after is exponentially faster.
PS: I met with the cardiologist a couple of weeks after and it was very informative. Although not able to replicate exactly the tachycardia on the stress test I did learn a lot about what may have caused this. I am also thankful that my Garmin was able “record” the incident and further proves how much an essential tool smart watches have become.
Finish line just ahead…