Since our two old friends, COVID-19 and the current living crisis1 have been stalking the land and intimidating people, like two high school idiot bullies, my half marathon running experience has been rather poor.
To remedy this oversight, I entered in the 2024 Christchurch Half Marathon, which at the time of publication of this average blog post, was held yesterday.
If you’re a supporter, follower, or subscriber of this account; firstly, thank you. Secondly, thank you again. Thirdly, I wrote about my last Dunedin Half Marathon, which you can find here.
It’s interesting to point out that my wife encourages me to run. Since I don’t hang out at pubs or underneath bridges while buying or selling manga, I’m allowed to have this vice. Plus she likes being a semi-professional spectator, as it allows her to drink vast quantities of coffee, waiting for her husband to appear, who has the speed of a tortoise.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, the race. My preparation for any race can be divided into two different categories: training and diet. To be honest, I don’t know which one is more difficult to stick to; it’s easy to fall off the wagon with both of them. I usually let myself down in these categories, and the preparation for the Christchurch Half Marathon was no exception.
As for the actual race, the course had a loop of 10.55 km, so I did two laps. It started outside of North Haley Park and ended inside it. I enjoyed it, however, I’m starting to find half marathons are becoming difficult for me to run. There are some reasons why:
1.) Once I’ve hit roughly 12 km, I can’t get slower or faster; I’m stuck in the same gear. It means that when I should be speeding up, I can’t. My body has developed a fail-safe device. When it identifies the measurement of 12 km, my body activates the fail-safe device that locks me at the speed, to try and mitigate the damage.
2.) If I haven’t checked my watch in some time, I can trick myself into believing that I’m running at a great pace. This illusion is destroyed when pace runners go past me, with their stupid flags and a hareem of runners. As I look up and see that estimated time of finishing on the flag, suddenly 5 m, 10 m, 25 m, 50 m ahead of me, my broken ego takes another pounding.
3.) I’m running out of excuses to explain what is happening around me, during the race. To explain this, I have to admit, yes, I’m getting older. Yes, I’m getting slower. Yes, I don’t train enough. Yes, my diet isn’t good enough leading up to a race. Yes, I daydream while I’m running, and I get distracted. These factors add up to the finishing time.
In saying that, I’ve tried to shift the blame. If a person that’s 20 years younger than me, runs past me like I’m standing still, I usually point out that person is younger, so they should be faster.
If a person that’s 20 years older than me, runs past me like I’m standing still, I usually point out that person is older, so they should have more experience.
If a person is wearing expensive shoes and breezes past me, I usually point out that it’s because they’re wearing fast shoes; and I’m not. My excuses for not achieving my dream finishing times are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Having said all of that, plus the fact I can’t currently bend my knees probably, I still love running; it makes me happy, and in this crazy world of climate change, wars, tax cuts, Brexits and hush-money payments to porn stars, finding a sliver of happiness is sometimes all that matters. Maybe.
That’s it for another week! Once again, thank you for reading, following, and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. Don’t forget to walk your dog, read a banned book, eat a grapefruit, and I’ll see you next week for the return of We Didn’t Start the Fire. Nice.
1.) Thanks inflation.
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