My First Half Marathon

On Saturday I ran my first half marathon, the Mt Beauty half marathon and fun run provided a great opportunity for a great scenic run and a lovely weekend away from the city! But being my first long distance running race, I learned a few things and I will admit it was much harder than I expected it to be. So, in this blog, I will run through what I have learned and what I would change if I had my time again.

First thing I have learned is that 21.1km’s is a long run! I know this sounds like something I should have learned during training, but I was definitely taken back by the feat of running for almost 2 hours. The Mt beauty run was a smaller event with no signs of pacers and limited distance signage at 5k’s, 11k’s, 16k’s and finish line. This ended up making the mental component of the run very intimidating in that each distance marker felt like an eternity away from the previous one.

The second thing that I learned is that your goal for your first run should be completion. The run is totally different from either training or what you imagine the run to be, so just completing a run should be your aim and you can worry about the time later.

The last thing to take away from the run is the importance of similar training to the race conditions. Living in the West of Melbourne and training on the flattest ground possible for a race on the highest mountain range in Victoria made things very difficult.

I enjoyed my first half marathon and look forward to my next distance run which will be the half marathon at The Melbourne Marathon Festival in October this year. However if I were to have my time again I would try and run in a larger event for my first run, although I loved the scenery of the small town of Mt Beauty, more organisation and support may have made the mental task of running for a long period of time just that little bit easier.

From a Podiatrist point of view I ran in Asics GT2000, I also had dry needling of my ITB and calf muscle complex before the run and sports tape applied to my feet the night before the run – all by my colleagues Ashley Wevling and Nathan Pring, and as such I ran the longest I have ever run completely pain free.

If you need some advice before a run or help dealing with lower limb injuries before the run book online now!