Strangely nothing :-(

I put off writing about the Herald half till tonight to give me a bit more time to process my feelings, and I've come to the conclusion that my feelings about the race are just nothing. It's the weirdest thing. I've never done a race that was not associated with an emotion in some way - either the joy of a pb, the satisfaction of a good run or the agony of blowing it. Every time I've paced someone, I've got to experience the emotion vicariously. Either way, it's there.

This time, nothing. The day didn't start too well. Of the seven gents in the group, only two turned up. We explained to them that we would be running at an even pace the whole way; they were free to run ahead if they wished and we'd pick them back up when they tired (though of course, that kind of ruins the idea of a pacer); if they dropped behind, we'd try to help them along, but eventually we'd have to keep going at the set pace. Both had done the run previously in roughly that kind of time.

Both set off too fast (amazing!) and we had to keep dragging them back. I think they got a surprise when we hit the 1k marker exactly on time, because they settled down into our pace after that. Mr #1 runner blew up the first time up Hunter St. I stayed back with him and tried to slowly bring him up to Horrie, but by the time we were half way down to Mrs Macquarie's Chair, he was falling further behind and was clearly not going to make the distance at that rate. Reluctantly, I bade my farewells - I think that he was very happy to be able to slow down.

We stopped to walk through the drink stop at the bottom, and when we looked up, Mr #2 was gone! Vanished. We knew that he was ahead of us because we'd stepped back to let him get to the table first, so we just cruised on at pace figuring that we'd find him again soon enough.

I think that it was heading up out of there that we got the first "Are you the 2 hour pacers. Are you on time? If we stick with you, will we make 2 hours?". Each time, we'd start chatting and encourage the people along, and the next time we hit a hill, they'd disappear :-(

We saw Mr #2 again in Macquarie St, but because of our "correct pace always" rule, we didn't catch him until Argyle St where he was starting to weave a bit. As soon as we crested the hill, he recovered and wanted to head off again. And thus it continued. We picked him up again down the end of Hickson, and took him a bit slower up Hunter (used up the 1 minute buffer we'd accidentally built up). Still, I noticed that his footfalls were getting heavier and heavier and the weaving was getting more pronounced. Sure enough, about the same place we lost Mr #1, Mr #2 dissappeared down the plughole.

By this stage, I was starting to feel pretty blah - physically great, but mentally very let down. We pressed on, picking up a couple of cool runners, but once again losing them on the hills (though I later found out that they both managed to keep the blue and yellow hats in sight and finish with satisfying times :-) ).

Coming up the Argyle Cut for the last time, I had one bloke look over at me and go "Oh! Damn! I've been just ahead of you since the 10k. I've been listening to you. You're the only ones talking. Every one else is too stuffed!". He stuck with us till Kent St and then move ahead. One more satisfied customer :-)

Along Kent St and Hickson Rd, Horrie started calling to everyone to come and catch us. A lot of people used the hill down to Hickson to pass us, but once we got onto Hickson itself, the passing dried up. We were yelling encouragement; Horrie even pointed to one bloke and said "You, in the black, you can catch us" and the bloke was so startled at being singled out that he sped up and did exactly that!

I crossed the line at 1:59:40 by my watch (it took us 2 1/2 minutes to cross the line at the start, so we worked on net time the whole way on the assumption that 2 hour runners would have started around the same place as us). I took off the chip, picked up the medal and wandered off into the mess that was the finishing area feeling very emotionally empty, but two things happened to really brighten up my day. The first was finding Angela, who was absolutely over the moon with her 6 minute pb (and she deserved every minute of it). The second was running back down the course, finding Lucky Legs near the start of Hickson Rd and enquiring whether I could join the royal procession (to which I received gracious assent). I have never seen anyone as focussed on a task as she was. Clearly she was hurting, but just as clearly, there was no way she was going to stop. Ewan's sprint training obviously has been having an effect, because not only did she finish, not only did she sprint (!!) to the line, but she also overtook the leading lady in the next lower age group in the last 100m. Awesome.

I started by saying that I was feeling nothing about the run, but recounting it here has made me realise all the good things that happened. Maybe it wasn't so blah after all. Thankyou for listening... :-)

Gnome