Sydney Marathon - 2025
Traveled to Sydney Australia to participate in the latest of the World Marathon Majors - #7. This was an enjoyable race for me - My build-up to this event was primarily just getting in regular training with longer runs in the range of 2 to 2.5 hours in the weeks leading up to the race. My body does not seem to handle VO2 max training or long tempo runs without significant recovery time - but I do seem to be able to work decently through recovery of endurance efforts. So I I had low expectations of going "fast" but had a confidence that as long as I kept things in-check aerobically, this would get me through the race.
Richie's build-up was spotty at best. He had a few good races in July and did a half in early August that suggested he was fit - but he had zero long runs over 13 miles and very few miles in the last month or so of training due to his work/travel schedule. But historically he always "shows-up" on race day.
He felt as though he would like to run just below 4 hours and so that meant around 9 min pace. In 2021 Richie suffered a TIA at the end of Boston - and though he had zero ongoing issues or deficits - it has caused him to be very cautious not to go too deep in these events.
At my age I have long since given up the idea of running a personal best - and running these races with a companion / racing/training partner is really the best way to experience them. So running with Richie was the plan - and though we have run many races together - we really have only ever finished 2 of them together. Something always happens - one of us is not feeling it, or one of us is feeling extremely good in the race and by agreement we agree to let that person go for it.
Today was a day that Richie was not feeling it, from the very early miles and though we kept together for nearly 2/3rds of the race - he admittedly was yo-yoing and knew that I was feeling really quite good.
After hitting a pit-stop at just under halfway and not knowing how many minutes or so that were lost, I began trying to make up some time to keep us on track for a sub 4. This mean moving the pace down to 8:45's instead of the 9 mins or so pace. This seemed to be where he began to fade.
The course was quite hilly with over 1000 ft in elevation and lots of turns and narrow sections and at least 2 180 degree out and back turns. And though we started with cool temps in the upper 40's by the time we were near the 15 mile mark, the sun was bright and the course was completely exposed.
As I checked back for him a couple of times when he was fading between 20k and 25k and slowed to rejoin him, he finally signaled to me to just go around the 29k mark.
At this point I just let things flow - and after a mile or two of running low 8's - I popped in my air pods and locked into see how I could do. Turns out I had a good bit left in the tank after running so conservatively the first part of the race. Ended up with a negative split. First half 2:01 and second half 1:51 and change. 9:17 ppm to 8:30 ppm.
Richie ended up having to walk a bit coming in at over 4:30 hours.
Saw Tracy in the final half mile as we finished in front of the Sydney Opera House Overall this was a very enjoyable experience
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