Dolls Point Half

Endomondo: "21.81 km in 1h:41m:25s"

Time for a race: I've run down to Doll's Point from my place when I wanted a long run (it's about 30-ish km there and back) and it's a very pretty spot, with the bay in one direction and the George's River in the other. Of course, it's perilously close to "The Shire" for a big person but at 8:00 AM on a winter's morning it didn't figure to be all that dangerous. This was a Sri Chinmoy event, cheap and cheerful & with excellent pancakes and after a couple of long-ish training runs a brisk 21 km hit out seemed just the go. The run itself, like all SC events, is based around loops (it makes providing fluids much, much easier) and Dolls Point-Ramsgate-Taren Point bridge is a very scenic 10 km.

I wanted to do this in 100 minutes, which would basically be extending my 16k PB pace for another 5 km.  It seemed like a reasonable challenge, and in fact, the 101 minutes will do me as a success, given that I seem to have run a bit over the 21.1 km anyway. So that was good & the run actually includes a PB for the 10k (43 mins) and 16k (73 mins) as well. On a competitive note, I didn't make the top 3 in my age group (by 7 minutes) and the #7 women's competitor passed me in the final km and comfortably held me off to the finish line. (That's actually about par for me)

Another fantastically sunny day, pretty much identical to the last couple of Sundays, with one big difference: the wind. The one thing my phone doesn't do is measure wind speed (I'm sure that's only because I haven't looked hard enough) but I think I can give you an idea. The first lap wasn't so bad; there was a noticeable breeze, but the most noticeable thing about it was that it seemed to be coming from two directions. The first run east from the bottom of the bridge past the sailing club to Dolls Point was into a mild headwind which irritatingly persisted after we turned north at the point to head up to Ramsgate. "Irritating" turned out to be a mild problem because by some mystery of weather by the time we got back to the point to turn west back towards the bridge for the second crossing, the wind had turned and there was now a howling gale in our faces, the kind of howling gale that makes you think that you're not moving at all despite the effort, and has you wondering if there isn't some way to run sideways so as to present a smaller target (there isn't, BTW). The one good thing about this was that the leaders were by now going past us on their final couple of km, and they looked pretty happy and relaxed with the gale at their back.

Because I run so many laps (unlike most distance runners, who hate laps) I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about winds. You might think that it all evens out, but in fact out of the 360 degrees that the wind might come from, only about 60 - at most - are beneficial. All of the other 300 are problematic, either because they slow you down, or interfere with your balance, or both. I was wondering what the winds would be like on top of the Taren Point Bridge, which I wasn't particularly looking forward to anyway because as bridges go, it does a very good impersonation of two non-trivial hills, and despite all Andrew H.'s exhortations, I still don't really like hills. But when I got onto the bridge, I forgot about the hill problem. It was time to worry about the standing up problem. The pedestrian pathway is protected by concrete barriers from traffic (hard to imagine they would actually be any use in an accident, but it IS nice to see them there) and the first problem was to avoid being blown into & over them. Every time one foot left the ground the wind would try to push you into the barrier, and please note that the definition of running is that there are periods where both feet aren't on the ground. Plus I had to hold onto my race number with one hand because I wasn't sure the safety pins were up to the task. The path is a shared pedestrian/cycle way, and cyclists were holding onto the railings to stop themselves being blown in front of the runners.

That sounds bad, but curiously downhill was even worse. Normally downhill I open out the stride and try to concentrate on not falling over while I run as fast as I can; not today. If you left your foot off the ground for the length of a full stride the wind would catch it and blow it across in front of the other one (yes, only for one side, for the other foot the wind tries to make you take a frog step) leading to disaster. I had to invent a new gait, which involved leaning into the wind and running slightly crabwise. Normally you hope to get back on the downhills the time you lost on the uphills. Today time was not the issue. Uprightness was. I didn't meet anyone who actually fell, but everyone I spoke to felt the same way about it.

Of course it was the same, reversed, going back the other way Really, quite an extraordinary feeling. I meant to take in a bit more of the scenery the second time round, but I was so busy concentrating I completely forgot.

Once off the bridge it was almost an easy run home. The wind did stay consistent, so it was at our backs for most of the last 4 km - if you look at the times I think I managed a 4:15 km around about the 18/19 km point. That is certainly tailwind, much as I might like to claim otherwise. I couldn't find any sprint in the legs over the last couple of km, which I suppose means no unused energy, but is a bit annoying when you get passed. It also suggests to me that the finishing burst of my youthful running was based around a lazy first 90% of the race. Strangely, that is what my PE teacher(s) used to say as well.

Hard work, but a lot of fun. Running with that wind makes for a totally different experience.