Run Melbourne – PW.

Last night, I went out to a Clare Bowditch concert with a couple of friends. CB was supported by Lanie Lane, a rockabilly/blues singer. It was awesome.

I got home rather late. I enjoyed the concert, but felt shitola afterwards.

I cried so much I was almost howling to the moon.

I nearly pulled out of Run Melbourne, was nearly a DNS. However, I had my professor of medicine/PhD supervisor to meet up with. My sprightly, fit 62 year old supervisor, who I had invited out to run. His (similarly aged) wife was doing the half marathon.

We had a chat. I looked at his iPod. A person’s playlist is very telling.

I asked him about his music preferences. He said, oh, I like to run to music. I like rock’n’roll. He told me about an iPhone app called Shazam, which tells a person what a song is when they play a bite of it into the iPhone.

I had a look at his music.

He had some Brahms, some other classical. Some Santana. Some 70’s rock.

Then- Pink. Then Taylor Swift. GOLD.

I ran. I started out really well, about 6:45 kms. Not ducking and weaving. I did the first 5km in 34 minutes.

During this first 5 km, I distracted myself by thinking about all the events of the last few months. Then I just concentrated on my breathing, the loud collective footfall of the other runners, the semi-decent weather that Melbourne had put on.

The first 6km were fine. After that, I started to seriously slow. I felt hungry. I wanted to take a nap on the side of the track. Many people were walking. The 7th km was slow. I got to what I thought was the 8km mark, but it was the 7km mark.

I hit the wall a bit, mentally, at that point.

I decided to walk. I went for a pee.

At the (actual) 8km mark, I started running. This was the bit up the bridge near the tennis centre. My legs were jelly-like, but I kept going. I was sloooooow.

At the Wellington st hill, I started walking again. A girl said to me “don’t stop, you are nearly there”. So I opened it up. I found out that it was her first 10km.

I ran like a bat out of hell for the last half a km. I finished in 74ish minutes. Not my finest hour. However, I trained yesterday with a new group, probably did not have enough glycogen in the system, and not to put too fine a point on it, I have been having a shit time generally.

A lesson was learned – if I have feel tired and want to slow down, then all is not lost. This is important for the marathon, but also for life in general.