23.3 Out of 30 Out Of 42.2

On Sunday December 22nd the plan is to run a homemade Brisbane Marathon to make up for the one proper I missed earlier this year.

The current track is pretty simple: from my apartment building in Milton along the river towards the city then further around past the Powerhouse then all the way along the river even further to Hamilton before venturing inland through industrial estates up to the Gateway Bridge. At the top of the bridge, I’ll turn around.

Tonight I tried to run 30 kilometres again for the first time since April to get back into a compressed training program. I know that mostly it will be a mental game. Tonight, more than the other days I’ve run long runs, that’s what it was. Sort of.

A few things went right and a few things went wrong. First, the good stuff to keep the mood high because 23.3 kilometres is still a pretty good innings out of context.

1. The route is simple and easy to follow though I did tonight use my old training route, following the Brisbane Marathon route over the Story Bridge and back and then up and down Moray Street in New Farm as deviations for more distance.
   
2. The anti-chafe stuff all worked a treat relative to last week. Got a few extra spots, found the start of another one I’ll prep for next time — next weekend, when I’ll do roughly 23.3 kilometres again.
   
3. Hydration was better but the change in route meant it wasn’t as predictable — in general I go for a good drink at kilometre 11 where I turn around to head back home, a sip at 16, and then finish up with 21. Last week I topped up again at 19. Rookie error. Tonight, I tried to sip at kilometre 9 but the bubbler at the end of River Terrace was trash so I opted to push it out to kilometre 18. This worked. More on that below though.
   
4. Nutrition was theoretically sound but poorly timed in practice.

Okay, the not so good:

1. I just have to train the route I’ll run. The elevation gain will make me a better runner — 163 metres on the Story Bridge/Moray Street route but, like, the rest of the homemade marathon track is level flat nearly until the Gateway.
   
2. Hydration: I drank too much at 18. Took a breath and went back for more and I wondered as I did it if I should have. Re: the mental game too — here I should have just turned around and started back but I was in my head a bit about pushing myself a bit past the usual distances. So I walked for 250 metres up the boardwalk towards Teneriffe then turned around and started over.
   
3. Nutrition: I ate well and in similar volumes of carbs to last weekend — not something that I tracked with much of a science, which I know I need to do if I’m to take this all really seriously — but I ate them too late. Last weekend I ate from about 12.30 to 2pm, had a few hundred millilitres of liquid carbs (read: schooners), then ran at 6pm. I ran tonight too at 6pm but I ate at 4.
   
4. Hit the gym today too — relatively light upper body and then a few sets of deadlifts. Not a huge set by itself but I don’t tend to mix long runs and weight training on the same day. Likely won’t repeat.
   
5. It got mental about kilometre 21 which is when my legs started to tense up. It fell off pretty fast after that. On the 22nd of December the plan is to run with Sean, one of my oldest friends and a frequent running buddy. We started the Gold Coast Marathon together in 2023. I left him behind pretty fast. But he’s got the mental I don’t have — he can do a seven hour 50 kilometre ultra marathon trail run.

Point four is the big one because I feel like the rest I can work on. Jess is prepared to meet us somewhere for a provisions run in lieu of the guy dressed up as a gel that I took a gel from at kilometre 32 on the Gold Coast Highway last year. A plan for something like Gatorade at the halfway mark to keep our legs turning over. But the breaking through of the feeling, three hours in, that there’ll still be another bloody hour — maybe an hour and a half given it will be hot in the Brisbane summer even with a 4.30am start — of this.

That’s what we’ll see.

Because while I’ve been writing about running a bit this year it’s not really about running so much as it is about creating the discipline to be good at something that’s hard. Here at the tail end of 2024 I’m starting to see the cracks in those disciplines. Far too much Baldur’s Gate 3 — a finished run, a run with the Netherstones collected, and two failed Honor Mode runs for those of you in the know — and falling behind with my word count for basically that reason and for comfort over progress and shoes with 970 kilometres on them that need replacing like a good chunk of my wardrobe.

The idea of this homebrew endurance race is to do it because I told myself I was going to run a marathon this year. That I made it, like, part of my identity enough that it’s a running joke in the office that there’s a countdown on for how long it takes me to mention to newcomers that I lived in London and ran a marathon. I am not the best at it. I do not want to be the best at it. Even below three hours — no thanks. Give me a sub-4 at the Gold Coast next year (for which tickets open at the start of business tomorrow morning Brisbane time) and I’ll be happy.

It’s just to bloody do it. To be who I said I was going to be.

And I reckon to point four of the negatives, point four of the lessons, is the feeling here with three working weeks left of 2024 that it needs to be replaced as much as my shoes. Nearly 1,000 kilometres run this year and all of them in my second pair of Saucony Triumph 20s. The paint chipping away at my good habits and I have somewhere in all my 840,000 words of notes draft resolutions for next year.

But there’s still some to go. Time enough to close the gaps on targets I won’t hit — I’m not gonna make 1,000,000 words this year but I’ll crack 900,000 — and to keep working on the ones I can: working through maybe a new draft of the novel formerly known as Breakbone, sending overdue bloody emails, and running a homemade marathon.

Follow my Strava to help make sure I get it done.