THE BALLARAT MARATHON
Taking on the biggest challenge since I retired from professional cycling!
Last weekend, I found myself taking on the biggest challenge since I retired from professional cycling: a marathon. 42.195ks. To my old road cyclist brain, that sounds like nothing - maybe an hour of riding hard…when I’m going well. But in terms of running, that number represents the pinnacle. You can’t call yourself a cyclist until you’ve ridden a century. You can’t call yourself a pro until you’ve ridden a grand tour. You can’t call yourself a runner until you’ve knocked out a marathon.
But why? Why would I put myself through this? I retired from cycling because I was done with suffering, didn’t I? To tell you the truth, I’ve been craving something to work towards. I wouldn’t say I miss it, but my days lived and died by a training plan for probably half my life, and whilst I don’t want to make those sacrifices anymore, having a routine and a daily sense of achievement gives me a real sense of comfort.
The challenge. That’s what this was all about. I wanted to sharpen my competitive edge again, touch base with that old racing dog and see if he still barks like he used to when he’s backed into a corner staring down the barrel of a really fucking hard effort.
Let’s rewind. How did I get to this point? Well, it all started a couple of months ago when my old mate and running buddy Aidan Moore gave me a call.
“Hey, Docker - what are you doing in 6 weeks? Fancy boosting over to Ballarat and doing the marathon?”
“Fuck…a marathon…”, I thought. Earlier in the year, I had loosely made plans to jet across to Europe to ride the Traka Adventure race; a 500 and something k off road bikepacking epic around my old home of Girona. For one reason or another, that had fallen through and I found myself kicking around Lancefield looking for something to scratch that part of my brain that craves exercise. I love being fit, and feeling healthy, but I know without a clear goal in mind I can slip a bit.
As I chatted to Aidan, the idea grew on me, and before I knew it I had agreed to go for it. He’d told me that sub 3 hours is the benchmark I should be aiming for. I’ve seen other retired riders have a crack at running a marathon - some of them smashing out a sub 3h off the back of racing season, and others blowing themselves…and their legs…to pieces in a blaze of 5 hour glory.
That’s it, then. That was my goal. My focus. My challenge.
As soon as you put your name down on the start list for a marathon, or any event for that matter, your mindset shifts. You’re in. You’re committed. You’ve set your stall out and now your neck is on the line - so you better be bloody ready. That’s something I wish teams did more when I was still riding; tell you what races you're doing further in advance. I really benefitted from knowing what was coming up, the fear it puts in you, that goal to focus on when you're out there doing the hard training days. Too often I’d be out there training away never really knowing when or what the next race would be, or worse getting the call a week - or even sometimes just days - before
“Hey, Mitch - so and so’s sick, we need you at the Tour of Poland in 2 days”...shit; just got back from a 6 hour training ride…better try to get fresh…
I’d entered. It was on. This was it. I sat down and worked out what the next 6 weeks of training were going to look like to make sure I could hit the start in the best shape possible, with what I thought was going to give me the lowest chance of totally destroying every bone, muscle, and tendon in my legs. On a whim I thought I'd use the next 4 weeks to build; 50ks, then 60, 70, up to 80, then take 2 weeks to freshen up and keep the legs ticking over for the big day. Sweet, sounded pretty bulletproof.
I’ve done some ultra runs before; a couple of 50ks, and in 2020 when Paris Roubaix was cancelled, my old mate Spinky and I cracked out 2 40k days back to back…I remember thinking after that “give me the Arenberg any day!” I actually run about as much as I cycle in retirement, so I knew I had the distance in me. The real challenge was going to be that pace. 4 minutes 15 seconds a kilometer for 3 hours…brutal…I started to think “shit…have I bitten off more than I can chew?...can I do that?...”
After a week or so of training, I ran into old mate Aidan again:
“Mitch. Training run; 30 ks, 2 k warm up, 26 k at race pace, 2 k warm down. You in?”
Starting to feel a bit daunted by the effort ahead of me, I agreed. I knew I needed to test the waters. Trotting around banking slow ks wasn’t going to cut it,; I needed to feel what race pace over a long day felt like. We smoked around the back gravel roads of Lanny, managing to sit at 4:10 pace for the session in the end. Aerobically, I didn’t actually find it too hard; I guess that big old engine still fires up OK. The tricky part was protecting my legs; that pace really takes it out of your muscles and bones, and over the next few runs, I started to feel daggers stabbing me in the legs; the old shin splints had arrived!
Throughout my whole training, in an effort to keep the aerobic system working but without smashing my legs to pieces, I actually kept on riding my bike a fair bit as well. As my training progressed I sank comfortably back into that simple old routine; wake up, eat, go out, complete a session, come home, eat, ice bath, recover. Simple. I actually didn’t realise how comfortable I was when I was a pro. Maybe that’s why I needed to hang up the wheels…a change is as good as a rest.
Before long, and after chatting with another mate Casey, I was out to do another race pace session; this time 35 ks. I checked my hydro pack on, and set out on a 6k lap of Lanny. I fought myself the whole way. One lap, I’d be thinking “Fuck, I’m cooked. I can’t do this!” then the next lap “Oh Mitchy boy, you’ve got this!” I pushed myself and got it done, and whilst I was pretty nailed, I was confident that I could handle a 3h marathon pace on the day.
Casey looked at my heart rate data from that training run, and made a pretty bold call; “mate, you were cruising” and told me I should start the marathon with the 2 hour 50 pacer. Start hard and hang on, give yourself some sliding space - if you start with the 3 hour group and then try to speed up, you’ll never be able to find 10 min, that’s it; you’ll be stuck at your pace. If you push early and build yourself a buffer, there’s a chance your engine will hold out and get you home well inside 3 hours, plus you’ve been there before, you know how to hurt. I’m still very much a novice when it comes to running, so I blindly took Casey’s advice.
Less than 2 weeks out, the work was done and it was time to recover as best I could before go time. I had a bit of a problem, though. After a few easy days my legs still felt like shit. I couldn’t run with out sharp pain splintering through my shins!
“Shit.” I thought to myself. “I have totally ballsed this up! I am such an idiot”
I ran into Aiden at Park Run and told him about my 35k and how I was now feeling. He laughed, that laugh that could only mean one thing…I’m screwed.
That was it! I had to really knuckle down and look after myself in that week before the race. I focussed on repairing my broken body and staying healthy in a way I haven’t in a long time. And you know what? It actually worked, and I started to come around.
When you’re a pro athlete, you’re basically paid to be really selfish. Social events and spending quality time doing stuff with your family get sacrificed in favour of resting, recovering, and looking after number one. As soon as you stop, you're happy to see all that stuff, rest and recovery go out the window, and you start to make up for years of sacrifice. Obviously when I stopped racing I still wanted to stay fit, so I kept riding and running as much as I can, but all the other stuff goes out the window; it’s up early to get the kids off to school, crank out some work, sneak a ride in, pick the kids up, more work, kids to bed, dinner, glass of wine, late to bed, repeat. There’s no chance to put your feet up and really ‘absorb the training’ in a restful way, it’s go go go.
In the years since retirement, this has become the norm, yet over time, you start to degrade bit by bit. A niggle here, a sore bit there, and no time to really do anything about it like you can when you’re paid to ride your bike full time. Although I didn’t get fully back on the wagon and tell Lydi that she would be solo parenting for 6 weeks so I can put my feet up ahead of my big run, I just made a bit of time to take care of myself, and it’s amazing how much it really paid off.
It was time. Race morning.
Just like the old days. I got up early - no chance I’m slipping up at the first hurdle and sleeping through my alarm. An old staple; Eggs and rice for breakfast - carbed her up. Hour and a half drive to ‘The Rat - time to digest. Obligatory runners pre race dump. A little warm up. Let's get this thing going!
The gun fired and we’re away. The start was hectic. It was super busy, and I hadn’t started right up with the 2 hour 50 pacer, so I spent the first few ks surfing the…feet…to work through the bunch up to him. The atmosphere was pretty intense; I know it’s meant to be fun, but I was treating this just like I would treat a race - so I was deadly focussed. And of course people were pissing me off.
“Oh fucking green shirt stop cutting in front of me. Whats up with an old mate's shoe, flapping like he’s running in flippers or something, seriously piss off. Oi sweats mcgee, you're sweating all over me.”
But I love this, it’s this internal dialogue that keeps my mind busy, because I am just as annoying as the rest of them, here I am running along with my hydro vest on, which apparently isn’t the done thing at most marathons. The guys in my group were probably thinking “Hey who’s this loser in the hydrovest? Where not doing a 100km trail run mate...fair enough.
The Ballarat marathon course was 2 laps of a circuit that went out, through Victoria park, round the lake, and back. The 2 hour 50 group felt comfortable, and I knew it would thin out a bit around half way when the guys running the half marathon finished. All I had to do was keep ticking along and knocking off ks, waiting for the inevitable suffering to really kick in.
We crossed the finish line for the first time, and the group got whittled down to about 15 or 20 guys. I felt like I’d made the selection in a classic, and started eying up the others in the group like I’d have to outsprint them at the end. Not this time, this was a personal challenge; just me, my feet, and the clock.
With 15k to go the hurt really started. I could feel my legs ripping. Aerobically, I was getting up to threshold, and I knew it was time to dig deep and call upon everything I learnt from all those years racing pro.
“Ok mate. Here we go. Don’t panic. We’ve been here before. This is it, you’re in the box now. It’s going to hurt, time to dig in”
I thought back to the Spring Classics. My favourite races. A huge block of getting smashed around across Belgium and France. Suffering, recovering, then going to suffer all over again for weeks on end. When the races got really tough, and I knew I was on my limit, I used to think to myself
“When this is all over, and you’re on the 11:30pm flight out of Brussels later tonight, how do you want to feel? What do you want that internal dialogue to be? Did you give it everything, or did you swing off and wimp out when it got hard? Did you just simply give up, or did you fight back?”
It would have been so easy to knock a beat off. I’d been at 2:50 pace for 2 hours now, I could slow down and still come in under 3 hours just like I said I was going to at the start. That would have been the easy option…but screw that. I didn’t come here for an easy day out; I wanted this moment, I wanted a challenge, and fuck me was I ready to suffer for it.
“Let’s go baby, it’s time. Go deep. Fucking DEEP! There is no way you are going to lose this group. It hurts? Good. I love it! It fucking should. LETS GO!!.”
Oh, boy, was I pushing now. It was so bloody hard, but strangely it felt good. This must be that runner's high they talk about. With 7 ks left - disaster. I could feel my left shoe lace coming undone. Shit. Here we go, another chance for an easy way out:
“Oh yeah I was on for 2:50, but my shoe lace came undone. Still got in under 3 though!”
Nah, screw that. I’m all in. I stopped, and tied my lace back up as quickly as I could. It probably took me maybe 20 seconds, I could still see the group ahead. I absolutely nailed myself, way up above threshold for a k or more to get back to the group. This was my new finish, get back. This is what I do it for; that fight. When you’re backed into a corner, after 2 and a half hours of suffering, and you’re staring down the barrel of a gruelling 20 minutes to finish it all off and leave it all out there. The last 6 weeks of training really did all come down to this, this moment.
I got back in the group, and it felt fucking easy. After chasing so hard, 4min/per km pace felt like a breeze in comparison. Shit, I was almost recovering?! With 2k to go, I sent it; chipped off the front and went for it. I’d aimed for 3 hours, then 2:50, and now I wanted more; I wanted to get this done knowing I’d left every ounce of effort out there on the roads around Ballarat. 500m to go, there’s a small rise towards the finish line and I’m on my arse.
Push. 300m to go.
Right turn there’s the banner, Push harder. 150m to go.
Push. Push. Push. All the way to the finish line.
2 hours 48 something. What an emotional roller coaster. I soaked it all in and really enjoyed the moment. I grabbed a beer, and a few minutes later Aidan crossed the line. We congratulated each other and chatted about what we’d both just experienced.
When I was a kid, I remember there was a photo on the wall of my old man’s room of him racing the Mount Beauty Marathon. I remember looking at that, and thinking about it as I grew up. I think he must have been about the age I am now…closing in on the big 4 0. I thought about what he would have sacrificed to run that day, and how that would have made him feel. I thought about him giving it his everything, and suffering just like I did today. He wanted a challenge, just like I did, albeit maybe for different reasons. I felt a bit emotional thinking about Dad running that day, but it just made me even more driven to leave it all out there.
With a beer sucked down, I grovelled back to the car. Holy Hell. This is where it became very clear to me that I am still not a runner. I just don’t have that robustness, I was totally stiff…to tell you the truth, I’m still pretty stiff now a few days later. It must have taken me 20 minutes to hobble that 400m or so back to the car. If there weren’t so many people around, I would have crawled on my hands and knees.
Do I have the marathon bug? I don’t know. Maybe? I guess only time will tell. However, what I do know is that I love a challenge. A real personal challenge that I can dedicate myself to. Something that lets me find that special place where I can push myself to…and beyond…my limit. I think everybody needs to take on a challenge like that once in a while, just to remind themselves what they’re really capable of.
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