Sometimes knowing what to write about a race comes easily. That’s not the case here. Everything is all mushed up. But I want to write about the Sydney Marathon before I forget. For better or worse, here goes.
Let’s start with the expo. We’d had a long day already by the time we arrived in Sydney, starting with an early morning wake up in Adelaide, then all the craziness connected with getting to the airport, hurrying up, waiting, then flying to Sydney. By the time we arrived at our hotel, it was late afternoon. Our hotel rooms weren’t ready so we couldn’t wash up or nap. Instead, a half-dozen of us grabbed a taxi-van to the expo a mile or so away.
A great expo. Lots of crowds, vendors. We did the requisite picture-taking then split up. I headed to the merch area to spend money I don’t have. In line to pay – a half-hour long wait, got the first inkling that Sydney would be special. Was talking with the two young women behind me. Their excitement was catchy. The time flew. Both from the Philippines, Yanna was running her second marathon and Maureen – yup, name twin and I were fated to meet, was there as her support. While I don’t recall the gritty details of the conversation, I know it involved talking about the race – it was going to be Yanna’s second marathon, the origins of our first names, running music, and that glue that bound us all together – shopping.
While Yanna and I compared and discussed our stashes, Maureen – our personal shopper -- ran around the expo picking up more items sizes, colors for each of us. This was very silly and fun and involved random bystanders who also made suggestions and brought us items. My two new friends also told everyone in sight how many marathons I had done which resulted in complete strangers coming up and congratulating me. As a super slow runner just trying to beat the cutoffs, I felt uncomfortable with all the attention – definitely struggling with imposter syndrome, but also it really boosted my ego.
Those women made my day and really brought home to me how lucky I was to be so far away and yet feel so at home. Because of them, I spent way more than I should have. Also, BTS, the South Korean boy band, is now on my running playlist.
The morning before the race, I met for coffee with the daughter of a college friend who I haven’t seen in decades but am connected with via facebook. How crazy is that? The daughter, much faster than I could ever hope to be, was also running Sydney. Just shaking my head at it all. Awed, how I was able to travel thousands of miles and lucky enough to have this wonderful moment with yet another great human.
After we parted, I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I need to sit with that sentence for a while. How the heck did that happen? How did I become this person who travels all over the place, meets cool new people, climbs to the tippity top of bridges, and blithely runs marathons?
Now on to race day.
Started early. Wake up: 4:45. In hotel lobby by 5:30. I’ve now done tons of marathons where I’ve had to wake up much earlier to get to starting lines that take off at ridiculous pre-dawn times. I’m that person who spent most of my life sleeping in. Now I'm not. Go figure.
Wearing my pre-race garbage bag to protect me from the morning chill, walked with a friend the five minutes to the Metro – a wonderland of cleanliness and modern tech, and with tons of other athletes rode over the Sydney Harbor Bridge to the drop off point two stops away. From there we hiked a steep hill to our starting area, which we found out was not yet open. So, my friend and I found a patch of cement behind a store and sat in the dark and cold and shivered for an hour. Here’s where being short is a plus. I can tuck my entire body into a standard size trash bag. I stayed reasonably warm, despite the cold temps.
Once our starting section opened, masses of us piled in and, seemingly as one, headed to the port-a-potty lines. For the next hour, that’s where we stood. I’m not complaining. After sitting on cold cement, it was a nice change to stretch the legs, chat with fellow athletes as the sun rose. I met runners from New Zealand, Tasmania, Germany, other parts of the US. For me, this is part of the fun.
Then joined up with about a half dozen friends from my tour group. We shuffled through the crowd and, with marathons being magic and all, of course found other friends from previous races. That’s just how these things work now. I have friends all over the world. I continue to be astounded at how lucky I am.
We stood around for what felt like days – about 45 minutes or so.
Once over the starting line, we headed steeply downhill and within a mile or so crossed over the Sydney Harbor Bridge and into the heart of the city. That’s another sentence I never in a million years thought that I would ever write. The first water stop wasn’t until after the 5k mark. Given that the run until then was primarily on highway-type road with limited accessibility, this made sense. We all were aware of water stop locations ahead of time. They were plainly laid out in the pre-race documents.
We wound around the city streets near the bridge, then gradually headed away from the harbor. There were hills. Lots of them. Like many others, I walked the uphills and ran the downhills. I don’t remember much crowd support, but I was in my own world anyhow, enjoying the city sights one step at a time. Exchanged thumbs-up with a few friends, inwardly cursed at a few folks who think blocking the route by running three or four across is acceptable.
The water stops were copious and well-stocked. The volunteers knew what they were doing and cheered us on like we were the most important people on earth.
Around mile six or so, the crowds picked up. The bells of St. Mary’s Cathedral were clanging and the speedy athletes who started an hour before us were on their way home. We sexy-pace folks were headed uphill for the next several miles, while they were headed downhill. Truly felt out of body at that point. It was so surreal and beautiful, celebratory.
We had more hills and a bunch of loops where I got to see more friends from previous races. It’s an amazing feeling – and I know my words right now are clumsy – to be so far from home, plodding on these foreign roads and see a friend from races years back coming the other way, and then both of you stop what you’re doing, hug, chat a bit and then you each continue on your way. Unreal. This happened at least three more times with several more people.
The one part of the race that I wasn’t looking forward to was an innocuous, several-mile long loopy area through a park. I see these sections on course maps and my brain says ‘doldrums,’ as in stagnation and boredom, and I picture running in place.
Again, I don’t know who the heck I am anymore because I got to this section of the race, which was at about mile 16? 18? when any normal person would want to give up, and for some reason I got energized. ‘Energized’ here does not mean I accelerated to six-minute miles. It means that I stopped taking super long walk breaks and picked up my running pace a little and couldn’t stop smiling.
Nearest reason I can give for this switch-up is all the loop marathons I did in the months leading up to Sydney. My mindset shifted on these courses from wanting to hurry up and finish to wanting to enjoy each moment. And that’s what I found myself doing on the park part of the race that many later described as the mentally toughest section for them.
I didn’t struggle one bit. What kept running through my head: “You are never going to be in this exact place at this exact moment ever again. Savor it.” And I did. I focused on the flowers, the trees, the few folks cheering us on, the other runners.
At one point I stopped to walk for a bit with a young woman.
“I really like your glasses,” I said, as I jogged past her. The frames were rainbow-hued and just looking at them made me smile. She caught up with me and we ran-walked together for a while. She lives in a town a few miles outside of Sydney and was running her first marathon. She was feeling relaxed but her mom, who she was texting with during the race, was stressed. I don’t remember much else about the conversation, and I had to leave her after a bit, but I told her she looked great, and I had the experience under my belt to know what I was talking about.
I loved that section of the course.
I remembered that runner, Alison -- who by the way finished shortly after I did, and others as I made my way back down past St. Mary’s – the bells now silent, and yelled out congratulations to the bemedaled, speedy athletes walking home. Pretty powerful confidence booster when they respond with, “Well done!!” and congratulate you too, even though they’re much younger, faster, leaner and you still have a few miles left to go.
The cruelest part of the course, and I write that with a smile on my face because I did enjoy it even while recognizing that it was awful, was the last couple of kilometers before the final 1K.
We veered off the road and onto a peninsula with ridiculously steep, knee-breaking downhills and equally evil uphills.
This park was simply gorgeous: flowers, harbor views, and the best of humanity - athletes giving their all. I was in heaven. No aches and no pains. Triple-energized. I know many people hated this section. I loved it.
Then a measly 1K left, we turned onto the main drag taking us downhill to the finish. In the distance was the harbor bridge, the Opera House. The beauty of that last section leaves me tongue-tied. Fans lined three or four deep and lo and behold someone was calling my name. How insane is that? It was a friend I’d met on another continent at another marathon a year ago. He’d finished and was walking back to his hotel and among the thousands out there, he saw me.
You know those times in life when you just know you’re exactly where you are supposed to be? Yeah. That was one of those moments. In fact, I think the whole race was a series of moments like that. The entire trip even.
As I approached the finish line I didn’t want to stop. Seriously. I wanted to live in that feeling forever.
At the end I was tired, but I had no aches. No pains. The months after Tokyo, my mantra was “Trust the process.” I did and I’m grateful.
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