xssfox

Yesterday I took part in the Melbourne Marathon Festival Half Marathon. While this was my first half marathon race, this wasn’t the first time I had competed in the festival having completed the 5km event last year in 30 minutes.

When people asked if I would be entering long racers or doing longer runs I shrugged it off as it would take significantly long to train for. I started the year off training for the 5km event again.

It probably sounds a bit silly, but my original goal was for a sub 25 minute 5km. The reasoning behind this is when you sign up for the Melbourne Marathon Festival each event has two different category. For the 5km this was below 25 minutes and above 25 minutes (inverted colours). I wanted to enter for the faster speed for the event. This would require shaving 5+ minutes off my personal best.

Goal: 5km sub 25 min

With the longer and longer training runs, and completing a few half marathons for fun, I realised that I might be in with a chance for entering the festival’s half marathon in the “faster” category @ 2:10:00 - so I did just that.

Goal: 5km sub 25 min 21.1km sub 2:10:00

Then in June I broke 2:06:18 during training, followed by 2:03:46 in July. Maybe I could do even better than I expected. Could I complete a sub 2:00:00 half?

Goal: 5km sub 25 min 21.1km sub 2:10:00 21.1km sub 2:00:00

Lead up

I ended up running about 30-35km a week, along with a bit of cycling. Tapering off about 2 weeks before. I think the distance could have been longer but its what I could fit in for time and recovery. Roughly every month or two I was also doing a half marathon.

Most of my training was less about getting my cardiovascular or leggies strong enough but actually getting my back used to the distance. While I’ve found 5 and 10km runs fine, 21.1km pushes the limit of my scoliosis.

The next problem I had was shoes. This turned into quite a conundrum for me. For short runs I had been using NB 1080v12 - these were soft and nice to run in but on long runs I started getting blisters. I switched to using my NB Hierro v7 - these I found a little more firm and grippy. However the Hierro v7’s were already somewhat past when they should be replaced, and were only going to get worse. They contained no grip, and barely any padding.

This lead me to go buy new shoes. I was tempted to buy another pair of Hierro v7’s, however they aren’t really the best shoes for this kind of run. I ended up purchasing a pair of HOKA Clifton 9. Initial short runs these were amazing, and set some really good times with these shoes. But I quickly discovered on long runs I got large blisters.

I was once again stuck. It was too close to race day to try more shoes, so in the end I went with the NB 1080s. Some more practice runs showed that wearing better socks, the extra wear-in, and better form made the blister problem negligible.

Unfortunately after some of my tapering period some of my runs left me with some pain and issues in my knees and ankle areas. A 2 day rest before the event seemingly sorted that out - maybe or maybe not. On the good news my HRV status had moved from bad to great over the last week.

The day

I’m not sure if it was eating in the morning or the anxiety of running a half - but my stomach was not happy. Walking to the start feeling like I was going to puke the entire way. I guess for me it was lucky that the start chaos meant a fairly slow start to the race and my stomach was able to settle in the first kilometre.

Alex had an unfortunate series of events causing her not to be able to run the pace she had planned, but luckily for me she was able to be my own personal pacer. We placed our selves just behind the official 2:00:00 pacers, but due to the slow start I lost sight of them very quickly.

I’m really glad to have had Alex with me. I didn’t quite understand the sheer number of people who I would be running with and often got overwhelmed. Having her there with me was able to keep me calm. There were around 10,000 people in the half marathon - though the course contains sections that overlap with the full marathon, adding to the amount of people.

Around the 5km mark I saw the pacers in the distance and by around the 10km mark we weren’t far away from them. We were setting around 5:30min laps - a great pace and better than I thought.

My energy/food plan was to start eating a chocolate bar around the 8km mark and eat a little bit more of it over the next 4 or so km. I had done this on previous runs and it had worked well. This plan did not go so well however. At the 7.5km mark I tried to start eating only to find that I had managed to melt the entire chocolate bar into goo. I had a little bit of it but didn’t eat any more of it after that. Given I had been calorie negative for the last few weeks, this was not good.

The pace started to slow and at the 15km mark we were doing 6:00min/km. I could no longer see the 2:00:00 pacers. I felt completely out of energy along with some ankle and hip pain. At 17km I walked for a short amount, and again at 19km. The desire to push through was high but I’m glad I didn’t - seeing a number of people collapsed near the finish line made me remember that it’s not worth putting yourself at that risk.

I was definitely at my limit entering the MCG, barely making it through the entrance, but seeing the line gave me just that little bit of extra energy to get me to the end. Alex encouraging me to pick up the pace - though I didn’t really have much left in me. We crossed the line together holding hands. An amazing event.

Official time of 2:02:06. Not quite the planned sub 2 hour, but still a personal best and an amazing achievement for someone who had only really just completed C25K in 2022.

I’m not entirely sure what’s next - but I have something special for myself planned for December. One thought I’ve had is trying for quicker Parkruns. I know next year I’m certainly going to try and work out the pre food and race fuel stuff a bit better - my stomach is still recovering.

Here’s some apps I’ve recently started using and enjoying. They might be of interested to you.

DITMM ( Did I Take My Meds? )

I used to use Google Calendar reminders to remind me to take medication. This was less than ideal because it didn’t keep a log of if I took the medication, along with I wanted to close out my Google Calendar account.

DITMM fills my needs by showing a notification when I need to take my medication, along with tracking when I last took them. It can also record some basic information like prescription number (Rx #), dose amounts and other metadata.

An interesting side effect of using a medication tracking app is you can use the data to generate plots for how well you are at taking medication on time. I wrote some python code to generate the below plot for myself.

Etar

Etar is an opensource calendar. It has pretty much everything you expect out of a calendar app. I started using it as I wanted to reduce my dependency on Google Apps and what brought me to it was that a forked version is provided in LineageOS. I use it in combination with DAVx⁵ to sync with Fastmail. It also works with Google Calendar/Workspace so I only need one calendar app to cover both needs.

K-9 Mail

Fastmail is great, but their app does not work in offline mode. I spend a lot of time outside of phone coverage and this drives me crazy. I was using Nine mail but switched to K-9 Mail because Nine is really more focused on Exchange users and K-9 is opensource.

There’s nothing fancy about K-9 Mail, it’s a no frills mail client. It receives email. You can have unified or seperate inboxes for accounts.

I’ve also configured a Google Workspace account through IMAP using the device passwords feature - works well enough for me and means I can remove the GMail app from my phone.

SuperCycle

A departure from the above apps, SuperCycle isn’t opensource - however unlike other cycling apps on the Play store it doesn’t contain ads, paid features and is entirely free.

SuperCycle is a bike computer for your phone. You can pair it to bluetooth speed, cadence, power meters and heart monitors. I use it so that I can monitor my heart rate and cadence while riding. Rides can be recorded and uploaded to Strava. It supports various maps and you can load GPX routes into them for navigation.

In the back of mind I’ve always been conscious about the environmental impact of eating red meat. If you haven’t had look at emissions of various produce types - it’s really worth a look. By choosing different produce you make an impact on your CO2e footprint. You don’t even have to cut out meat entirely to do this.

Previously I had done things like:

• choosing vegetarian or vegan options when available at restaurants
• meat alternatives like (Beyond, Impossible, ect…)
• cooking/consuming less meat in general

Some small changes here can have some large environmental footprint and health benefits. I really recommend giving a reduced meat diet a go.

More recently though I’ve decided to do a bit more. I think this is what some would even call vegetarian. My goal here is to reduce my meat consumption to 0. I’m not entirely sure what kicked it off, I think I just happened to have a few days of eating entirely vegetarian meals by chance and decided to just keep running with it. For over the last two weeks I’ve actively tried to eat no meat.

I’m not some angel though. There’s some beef stock in our cupboard that might have animal contents, parmesan cheese with animal rennet was accidentally used one night, and an ordering mistake a cafe resulted in a chilli scramble with bacon rather than the vegetarian option. Wasting the food doesn’t align with the goals of reducing emissions and environmental impact. I however wouldn’t be surprised if the taste of meat becomes repulsive to me.

I haven’t really missed meat at all. In most cases I feel like it never really added anything to meal. Most meat when cooked is seasoned or mixed with other tasty ingredients. A typical sandwich for example might have several vegetables on it and one meat - remove the meat and it’s still tasty sandwich. I’ve mostly been avoiding meat substitutes as well. They are okay but personally I prefer something designed without them.

Meals I’ve been enjoying

I feel like it might be remiss of me not to mention some of the meals I’ve been enjoying since making this change.

Bolognese without meat works remarkably well - add a bunch of carrot and garlic and you are good to go. (side note here: if your Italian, can you please let me know what vegetarian pasta sauce is actually called, because I don’t think it’s bolognese?). Like wise pasta bakes can be a pretty easy meal that doesn’t require meat.

Taco’s, burritos, nachos - these can all be done without meat - and I actually prefer it a lot this way. I’ve been getting a lot better at making vegetarian chilli mixes - and there are a lot of different ingredients and flavours to play with.

I’ve been able to work out a veg options for my bánh mì, so lunches are sorted.

I’ve also been exploring some new foods and flavours. There’s been a bunch of things like tofu, rice, brussels sprouts that I previously had discounted because my first experiences of them were bad - but I’ve actually found that I either like or don’t mind these things when cooked and prepared correctly. I’m looking forward to exploring (cautiously) more.

My vegan cheese problem

I’m not vegan (yet - this is something I want to explore later). I am however lactose intolerant - which means I try to reduce my milk/cheese consumption. Coffees are usually soy or oat, and I’ve recently been trying some of the vegan cheeses available. I could use the lactose free cheeses, however I feel like it’s a good opportunity to switch to vegan alternatives if viable.

So what’s the problem? Well apart from stock availability, it’s where the cheese is made. For Bio Cheese it’s made in Greece, for Cheer it’s Scotland. There’s really nothing wrong with these countries, it’s just the frustration that it’s being shipped all the way from those locations to Australia. Apparently transport makes up very little in the CO2e, but I wonder how bad it is for such long distances. It’s not going to stop me purchasing vegan cheese but I wish there was a more local option.

The future

At least in the short term I’m going to continue avoiding meat. I’m sure I’ll slip up from time to time. Eventually I’d like to switch to vegan, or at the very least remove eggs from my diet - but for now vegetarianism is where I’ll be.