The Brooks River Run is probably the best introduction to racing, in my humble rookie opinion. Firstly, it's in the evening (+1!) , not at some godforsaken early morning hour. And we all know that lazy, couch-blobbing blobs like me are almost always not morning persons. It's bad enough not knowing what to expect at your first race without being less than awake for it. Evening races FTW!
With my cheer squad of two, we made our way down to Coulson Gardens, next to the Maribyrnong River near the Angler's Tavern. I totally didn't know what to expect. As we walked towards the start line and registration table, I saw all these runners doing practice laps and/or warm-ups going by. So this is what serious runners do. I started to feel horribly under-prepared and intimidated.
But...it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and I was getting pretty excited about the race. Got my number and timing chip, fixed them on and did some warm-up stretching. There was a pre-race aerobics warm-up on stage and 5.10pm which was quite fun, although my thighs would say otherwise (damn you, squats!)
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| Pinning on my race number! |
The nerves were slowly building all this while, evidenced by my two toilet trips before the race (my dragon boating coach said being nervous puts pressure on your bladder, hence the need to pee!). I managed to sneak a final toilet trip in about 3 minutes before the start of the 4k. I grabbed a drink from the water station, and placed myself towards the back of the pack, in front of the walkers and pram pushers.
I had a quick chat with the lady next to me who was also running her first race (she overtook me in like the first 1k). The excitement (tension?) was building up. The start was called. I plugged in my earphones, and as the start went off I shuffled along to the start line.
And off I went. Started at what I thought was a reasonable pace. My plan for this race was to start off slow, build up over the next few kilometres and finish strong. That didn't quite work out as well as I hoped. I started getting distracted by the other runners and all these little kids who were running about all over the place. I overtook some people, got overtaken, and tried not to trip over some kiddies who decided they had enough and just stopped in the middle of the track.
The adrenalin and other faster runners made me pick up my pace, and I started to fade a little bit. It was also quite warm, and afternoon sun was in my face pretty much the whole time. Towards the middle of the race I was breathing really heavily and started to drop my stride. Rather than shuffle pathetically and drag my feet, I decided to walk for a minute to recover at about the 3k mark. At this point I learnt my first lesson.
Lesson 1: Stay focused. Don't get distracted by faster pacers, you gotta just focus on your own pace and race plan.
That seemed to work, and I picked it up again for the final 2k. I started to get into the swing of it and managed to overtake a couple of runners who had overtook me earlier (woohoo!). As I neared the end of the course, I was suddenly awash with excitement. The prospect of finishing my first ever race overwhelmed me, and my heart started pounding against my chest. This of course affected my breathing and I had to walk a few steps to recollect myself. I told myself to pull it together - "Stay calm! Breathe!" - and continued. In the last 150m I could hear my cheer squad of two yelling my name, and I sprinted the rest of the way towards the finish line.
Lesson 2: Stay calm. Don't get overexcited when you're 300m out from the finish line like I did, and have your heart nearly explode with excitement that you almost couldn't breathe!
So yeah. I survived. Made a few rookie mistakes, and learnt a couple of valuable lessons for my next race - the Run for the Kids 5k on 17 April (yups! I signed up for that one!). I'm so glad I made it through, although I am disappointed with my time. Still waiting for the results, but unofficially it was about 30 minutes, which was 3 minutes under my time trial :(
Still, I'm happy with myself for making it through, and *insert self-motivating fist pump* it can only get better from here!
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