Head bowed, but still high

A maxim is often cited: History doesn't repeat, but it can rhyme. Well, sometimes it does repeat.

A year ago I wrote a blog about my effort at the 2023 North Shore Marathon. In it there was a section: "One annoying thing was that my watch recorded 20.6km for the first half. This means either it was shorter than a marathon, or my watch hadn't quite tracked it accurately and I was actually running faster than I should have been." I should have really read that report before this morning's race because history did repeat: On Sunday, race day, I was comfortably holding my target pace (4:35/km) for the first loop but when I came up to the half-way point it was clear this was all a fiction. I had completed the first half in 1 hour 33 minutes, a respectable time for a half marathon but about over 3 minutes earlier than planned for my full marathon. It was equivalent to 4:24/km, which I would like to think I could hold on a flat marathon but not when you're running up hills and on sand. Unlike the Kirikiriroa Marathon, there weren't kilometre markers so nothing to counter the bad intel from my watch until the mid-way point, by which time it was almost certainly too late.

I pulled it back a little but by the 30km mark, the fastest 30km of my life, I knew I had overcooked it, and by the 36km mark I slowed down a lot and the temptation to walk started to become strong. That I didn't walk was very satisfying in retrospect. It was hard, steely work to complete the last two beach sections and the last ascent over the hill to Milford. Having lost my faith in my watch, I had to mentally estimate the distance to the finish line and knew that despite everything, I was still possibly going to finish in higher part of my target range of 3:15-3:20. The last part of the marathon is a 800m section of sand and about 100m at Craig Reserve to the finish line, which I crossed at 3:18:49.

I was shattered at the finish line, ducked straight in for a light massage on my burning, tight calves and then struggled out. I started to tremble in shock and sat down for an extended time. Fortunately, I had other people I knew and could talk to while I gave my body some time to get back to equilibrium, otherwise I would have just found some damp ground to lie on.

To have done it with so much struggle is never nice, and the calls for a new better watch, which I almost bought pre-race, are only getting stronger. But I still got my target, a 24 minute improvement on last year, and the fastest I've ever done the course by 14 minutes (in my unofficial running of the cancelled marathon event in 2019). It's also my second fastest marathon effort. I can't be too sad about it. I'll stand by my words and stay out of this event next year, although I might marshal and gain a free entry into 2026's event.

Despite the shakes after the race, there were no niggles or tightness. I could walk around our hilly block without much difficulty in the afternoon afterwards. I'll keep a low profile for a few days before I try some easy runs. I have three weeks till my reunion with Northhead in the Devonport Half Marathon, and at some stage I will make a call on whether to go into the Auckland Marathon in November.

Before bowing before Northhead yet again...

This is the pre-run post that will inevitably be followed by a post-run post. The North Shore Marathon is on the coming Sunday and out of the four different events I've run, it is the one that has been hardest to crack. I feel I've never done it well. Even the best time, my effort in the cancelled event of 2019, was still a crawl to the end (and then a finish line vomit). I've vowed this year would be my last attempt (at least for a time) and next year I should try some that I haven't tried before.

Why is this course hard? Even though it is simply running back-and-forth, back-and-forth between Milford Beach and the top of Northhead, it has 12 beach sections (four times doing the same three sections), 10 hills (including Northhead twice, and with 500m ascent over the whole course) and all this spread out over the normal 42.2km of a marathon in between. 

Another element is the placement of the second ascent of Northhead, which starts at the 30km mark. For those who haven't trained and run a marathon before, the rarefied air beyond 30km is when the "Wall" lurks. Even on the flat, you can feel like a champion at 29km, hit the Wall and then uncontrollably slow at 31km. Last year I mildly slowed down at 28km, and then was crawling after my second time up Northhead. In 2019, my best year, the Wall started to hit at 32km, just after Northhead, and that is still with three other hills and three stretches of beach to run over the last 10km. Any strategy for running this course has to be to fuel well for the race and pace so that you still have enough in the tank on the descent of Northhead. 

But these weeks leading up to the event I had to ask myself what my purpose was in running the North Shore Marathon. This is a very good question - and it might surprise some that many people don't "race" to do their very best. This is not the course for a Personal Best, and it's not an "A-race" for me (i.e. the main targeted event), so it makes sense to think about what running it can contribute to my running and a base for other events. And as it may well be the last time running there, I like the idea of just posting a solid time, better than the previous efforts, but not risk trying to do a maximal effort, which could result in me pushing too hard and suffering yet again on the final 10km. I believe I should be able, with a maximal effort, to get close to 3:10km, and if it were the last marathon I were to ever run, I'd aim for a time in the range of 3:10-3:15, but I think 3:15-3:20 is safer, and be happy to fall back to 3:20-3:25, which would still be a course PB. 

It's been an awkward period of training since the Kirikiriroa Marathon in June. I had four little enforced training breaks. Firstly, post-Kirikiriroa, I had an irritated quad which took some time to go, then almost as soon as it had come right, I had a gastro infection, and not long after that a touch of ITB syndrome, and then finally, just when I was on what was meant to be my longest run in the peak of peakiest weeks, I had a hamstring niggle again. But even with these, I have trained and run pretty well since then and there have been sessions where it is clear I am at least as strong as I am from the first half of the year.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this run and seeing what my new fitness can do with this tough nut!

The speech that could have been and then was

Back in 2017, we had a party to celebrate my father's big 7-0. It was Peak Dad, Peak Warren, before the dramatic changes for him and the family. I spoke at that event and remember that, despite being a confident public speaker, that I didn’t really have the frame or the mind to really speak of my father from the heart. Maybe it is our stoic Scottish heritage. I find it dreadful that only in his passing does meaning clarify and the confidence to say something.

My father was a proud man. He was proud in his achievements, the life he had built, and I would have been proud too to have done in my adult life, the scale of transformation: He was first in my memory a sheep farmer, who became a market gardener. Then a market gardener who became an ice factory owner. He seemed tireless in finding new ways to be Warren, and to be Dad, whether it would be becoming a Drinkmaster franchisee or a liquor store owner, and then launching a take-over of the ice factory to own it once more. Call me traditional but I’ve been in the same industry my whole entire life, and to make these leaps I find extraordinary.

He was proud of family and, boy, his prodigiousness puts the rest of us to shame. Even though his love of family, and his idea of family, went too far at times, there was never any doubt that family is what made him whole and happy.

His approach to making a life and family was called “the Goudie Way”, which apparently was the name he first proposed for what became Goudie Road in Helensville. The Goudie Way was the disciplined, ambitious, and yes, patriarchal, approach to life that he could control with his judgement and wisdom. Unfortunately, his first three born Goudies were opinionated enough to challenge his views of the world, as soon as they were old enough, to whittle it down to simply, Warren’s Way. I felt bad that when I went to Ashburton the first time, that he prefaced all his comments with, “I know you won’t agree but…”

He was proud of his ability to bounce back. It was the habit of a lifetime. Even at the depths, at almost each stage of the last five years, you could see him calculating a plan, a way to restore order and his position. Even after his second major stroke and being put in hospital, he was keen to prove that he could live in the Chalmers Street home alone once more. When Christy and I were down last year, he insisted on visiting the house for old time sakes. We took him, but feared the whole time that he would refuse to leave; but no, he was really wanting to show that he could make it in the front door unassisted, a difficult right-hand turn and up a step. In that moment I knew he wasn’t proving it to us but to himself that he could have that autonomy once more, that he could come back.

Dad was a proud man, too proud to be disabled, disabled by a stroke, when there was no cure for the pain.

In his last two years, anyone could see he was not just struggling with his body, but his mind and his demons. It is a fault of the memory to have the recency of this time as the memory to represent him. It is not fair. He had the fullest life and happiness, and joy with being Warren and being with his family

The memories that I hold dearest is Dad’s exuberant laughs in the annual NRL rugby league finals parties at our Hobsonville home, swimming at the beach with him in Fiji when I was 15 - he liked to try things and be involved; his glee when hitting the oysters at Valentines restaurant, which I couldn’t understand then, but do now; seeing Dad with a cat at his side, and talking with him about his fruit trees at Redoubt Road. I never knew he loved plums!

In 2022 I used to call Dad from my work car as I drove between Auckland and Hamilton. That continued until his ears failed, and then the feeling of separation deepened, and it was only when I went down to Ashburton to visit him in his room that we could talk. But the topics remained the same. He was in pain but kept to Warren’s Way in his own obstinate fashion, refusing the food there, demanding his schedule and his freedoms.

Last Wednesday afternoon we knew he might not make it. I insisted on having a video call to see him and I thank goodness I did. Barely minutes after the end of the call, Brenda sent the message that he had passed and all hope of further Warren stories and memories ended too.

The last ten days have been difficult. I don’t want my father gone, but I know that the pain and confusion he was constantly in the thrall of was unbearable, and only getting worse, and that he was never going to escape that till his final day. That has come and I can only take solace that there is peace for him.