The Road to Canberra

Running has always been my sanctuary. It is what I do to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state of mind. It has helped me through so pretty tough times and honestly, I don't know where I would be without it. For me, running is about enjoying the experience and feeling better at the end of it, so the thing that has always frightened me about really training hard for a marathon and committing to a goal time was that it might ruin the experience of running.

This fear was centred around the thought of 'what if I can't do it?'

Finishing a marathon is one thing, but finishing a marathon under the pressure of a goal time... well that is taking things up a whole other level. Yet the idea was never far from my mind and having reached my goal of running 3000km for 2018, I knew that now was as good as time as ever to really have a crack.

And so it was, that on the 24th of December 2018 I took the first steps on 'the road to Canberra' Marathon campaign.

The goal - to run my fastest marathon.

Take the risk. Take the chance. Put your heart and soul into it, because when you put your soul into it, you will become what you've always dreamed. Jamie Brewer 

This would be my 18th  marathon however, it would be like no marathon I had run before. Well, technically I had run this marathon before, it was my first, but never had I trained for a marathon to run a PB.

I knew this wasn't going to be easy and I knew I needed the best, so I turned to the one and only Simon 'Bevo' Bevege.

When I started with the Milers there would not be a single run where someone wouldn't mention the great 'Bevo'. I had never met the man, but I felt as though I knew him through the stories that were spoken as the milers paced around the tan. Bevo and I had exchanged emails when I first started with the club about my marathon a month project. At the time I was just running for fun and my only goal was to finish each marathon, so there wasn't a lot of advice Bevo could offer, but he did say when I was ready to have a crack at a marathon to get back in touch.

It took me a year and a half after that first email exchange to finally be ready to have a crack and it was almost as if Bevo had been waiting, for as soon as I hit the send button on my email asking him if he would coach me for Canberra Marathon he replied almost instantaneously saying he would love to take me on!

Before I knew it I had a pre-marathon training plan and the fear of 'what if I can't do it' had given way to a newfound susurration in my soul - 'what if you can!'

I had followed a few different training programs in the past and while I found benefit in them, nothing can compare to having your own training program put together by your own coach. I loved the discipline and finesse that it brought to my running. Even though I was running more then I had previously, it didn't feel like it and the variety of the sessions kept my enthusiasm high.

By the end of the 4-week pre-marathon program I had already seen an improvement in my running, I was easily running 30km SLR's and any doubt I had about if this was possible had now become a distant memory.

I was so enthusiastic that I even decided to sign up to a local strength and conditioning gym to ensure that I was doing everything possible to reach my marathon goal.

The first week was really tough as my body wasn't used to weight training. I made the error in week two of trying to run a lunchtime interval session after a morning at the gym (sorry Bevo) and learned pretty quickly that this wasn't going to be the best approach and that I needed to alternate the speed work with the weight training so that my running didn't suffer.

After a few weeks, my body became attuned to the training and now the only challenge was getting out of bed at 5:40am every morning to fit everything in.

Week 5 of the training block was when I first got to see how I was progressing with the training by having a crack at the Wangaratta half marathon. Bevo had given me my racing orders and I was determined to follow them. And follow them I did. 

Wangaratta has to be my most comfortable race to date. I felt good and I had a smile on my face the whole way. I stuck to the plan right up until the last km where I could see the finish line and just gave it all I had. I didn't know it at the time but the sprint finish was the difference between 4th and 3rd place for the women.

My time was 1:33:01 - a 7 minute PB and I was over the moon.

I sent Bevo a message to tell him the results and he said it was a great sign for Canberra and that I was definitely giving myself every chance to run a sub 3:20 but to keep in mind that Canberra is a not an easy course and that we would have to wait and see how things progress over the next 5 weeks of training.

That next 5 weeks of training was the hardest I have ever worked for something in my life. I covered 430km of training runs and really started to find my stride. All of this wouldn't have been possible without my running buddies Rach and MOD who were on every long run and a lot of the speed sessions. Their encouragement and belief in me lifted me to another level and not once did they let me fall behind.

Whilst running is very much an individual sport I've found great support and friendship by running as part of a group. I have also found that the running community is filled with inspirational stories of resilience. I am grateful to those that have had the courage to share their stories with me and for those that have listened to mine.

Communities are helpful to join or create because they provide support to the individuals who are impacted by the daily stress, struggles and chaos of life.

By the end of the training program, I was feeling good and was the fittest I had ever been. I did have a small niggle in my left Achilles but I just put it down to the amount of training. The final run before taper time was the Sri Chinmoy 10km race at Williamstown. The plan was to have a crack at a 10km PB and to aim for a pace of a 4:05. However, on the warm-up run, the niggle in my Achilles had turned into more of a bite. I decided to just run and hopefully, it would be alright.

Unfortunately, it was not. I got through the first 5km and then it became obvious that something was not right. By the 8th km, the pain brought my running to a halt and I walked to the finish line.

I was pretty disappointed but tried to stay positive which was helped by having breakfast with Bevo who reminded me that all the hard work was done now and that I wasn't going to get any fitter or faster in the next two weeks. The plan now was just to do a few light sessions during the taper and hope like hell that everything would be ok come race day.

I drove up to Canberra on Friday before the race and met Mum, Dad, Sally and Marcio. We had a great night mostly because our hotel room had one of those google tv's in it and we spent half the night asking it silly questions. My favourite one was "Hey Google - tell us who is going to win the Canberra Marathon on Sunday." Haha, good times!

Dad was running the 10km first thing Sunday morning so we all went down for that and he is now talking about running a half marathon!

We stuck to tradition on Saturday night and cooked up a big spag bowl and garlic bread with delicious fresh ingredients that Mum and Sal had picked up that morning from the farmers market. Then it was off to bed for me to try and get a good nights sleep before the big race. As I drifted off to sleep I thought about all the great memories, experiences and people that running has brought into my life and decided that no matter what happened tomorrow I already was at my personal best for having stuck with this through a very hard time in my life. I was proud that even though there had been days when I didn't feel like running, I had gone anyway, and here I was now, ready to take on the biggest race of my life!

It's funny as I sit to write this I can't actually recall the start of the race. I think I was just so focused on the job at hand that that is all I was really thinking about. I remember meeting up with the other Milers that were running and wishing everyone good luck but that is the extent of it. The first memory I have is seeing my Mum and Dad at around 9km in at the first gel stop. They cheered me on and told me that I was spot on time. I was but unfortunately, my Achilles was starting to hurt.

...just keep going. Don't stop. Don't even think about stopping until you get there, and don't give much thought to where "there" is. Whatever comes, just don't stop. Phil Knight

When I think about what it is in life that I pride myself on most, it's my ability to always finish the things I start. A quality most recently described to me by my good friend as my quiet determination... And boy was I going to need all my determination in this race.

By 19km my Achillies was anything but quiet and each stride was sending pain through my left leg. At one stage I contemplated hoping the rest of the marathon on my right leg - surely that's possible and hey it would be some kind of PB right?

At my next gel stop, Dad ran alongside me and asked me how I was going to which I replied I was hurting. He said, "don't push it Mojo, you don't have to finish it."

But I knew that I did, and at that moment it dawned on me that this is what I had been training for all along. Sure you train to get faster and fitter but I think the most important thing that we train for is the ability to go on when things get tough. For me, it is the ability to disconnect from the physical being and run with the soul which is exactly what I did. I transcended my mind into another place and let my body go on autopilot to finish the race.

And it worked! Not only did I finish but I finished with a 9 minute PB with an official time of 3:22:23.

My 18th marathon will certainly be one to remember and it will always remind me that no matter how hard things get in life, never stop moving forward.

All you need to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and feed yourself. We can do much more than we think if we actually give it a go. Jasmin Paris

Happy running x