Well, today was the day of the Ryde Aquatic Festival and the 10K Fun Run event in Gladesville. (We’d actually mistakenly thought the run was Saturday morning, so Friday night we’d carb-loaded and everything before we thought to check the entry form. Oops. Oh well; it was too hot to run Saturday anyway.) I’d like to start off by saying that AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I will NEVER run a race in a hilly residential area again. This was the hilliest run I’ve ever been on and it KILLED. Add in the fact that the crowd thinned pretty quickly – most of them were doing the 5K – and soon it was just me and the Snook and one old guy clambering up endless hill after hill of McMansions. I’d forgotten my pedometer and there was no signage announcing the distance, so we had no cue whatsoever about how far we had to go. I think I started to go a little mad. At one point the route crossed a park, and another section was along a trail through a little bit of woods, but mostly it was just endless suburbia. (At one point, I could swear that the damn course was a tesseract.) My goal had been to run the whole thing without walking, but the hills sapped my will to live pretty quickly. At roughly the halfway point – I have no way of knowing, really – I told the Snook to go on ahead. He was itching to pass the old guy but I didn’t have it in me. So I plodded on alone. About three years later (in my subjective mental time) the tesseract finally folded in on itself and the finish line came into view. I crossed at 71:34. Not the greatest time, but understandable considering the hills, I think. (The Snook finished in 67:09.) I finished eighth out of my age group though! (There were only ten of us.) And I think that’s probably it for the Sydney running season until the heat of summer is behind us. Maybe I’ll take up swimming…
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Plenty of 50m pools in your area – University, Victoria Park. I loves me swimming!
I know; we’ve swum at Vic Park in the past. I need to take a stroke class though. Folks in the Midwest don’t *do* swimming the way you guys do. If you can jump in a lake and not drown, we say you can swim. I’ve never been taught a proper breaststroke in my life.
Congratulations on finishing!! I’ve been avoiding hilly races for a long time, but am going to change that this year. Boston beat me up last spring; I need to train and race more on hills so I don’t get surprised like that again.
I ran a 10K today, too, but it was a very flat one and not at all hot (much easier).
Now you can look back on that race as one that didn’t kill you: it made you stronger! (now that it’s over…) 🙂
The MS 8km in June and the Pub to Pub are very hilly courses. MS is run around North Sydney. You know the three cliffs you can see west of the bridge? It is up and down those. The first 6km of the Pub to Pub is flat, but the last 7km is a serious amount of uphill. It hurt.
There are benefits to hill running, of course, but mostly it just is really painful.
Anything on the Bay run is flat. (The one in Drummoyne).
A lack of kilometre markers is horrible. I live for kilometre markers when I race.