Gold Coast Marathon 2022: Double The Fun, Twice The Pain: Recap - Race Day 1, The Asics Half Marathon

After a two year break because of the worldwide pandemic, I was finally back in my second home for the Gold Coast Marathon 2022. It's been way too long but the journey of getting here was full of trials and tribulations.

With the pandemic sorta easing and things around the world beginning to wake up again, I was practically excited when the Gold Coast was once again open to foreigners, that meant I could sign up to run my annual running pilgrimage again. This will be my 7th year of running it and I wasn't going to miss out after the last two years of non starting.

Initially I wanted to just run the marathon, not to break any new PR's, I really wasn't ready for that but my wife suggested that I instead try for 63.3km Gold Coast Double, which was running the half marathon on Saturday and the marathon on Sunday. I was really hesitant at first, I mean, come on, how does one even train for that and the toll it would take on the legs for two consecutive days could not be predicted. Yes, I've run ultra-marathons before but this is far from that!

But in the end I said, why not, after the two years the world has had, this would be a nice redeeming attempt, monumental even (at least for me) even if I had to go thru some suffering getting there. So, a custom made training plan was drawn up. Nothing fancy but something that needed to get my legs used to running those extra miles. The plan was nice and smooth and for once, I managed to keep it such that I didn't pick up any last minute training injuries which I'm known for. After all, the plan was basically just to survive both the races.

So, with that out of the way, it was time to get things prepared for the trip. This is where the stress really began. To be blunt, the Visa application was really the main culprit. With lots of tales about the process taking a long time unlike the instantaneous approvals of years gone by, I decided to apply real early and was hopeful things would be good. But I was devastated when my application was rejected over reasons (ridiculous in my opinion) which I shall not even bother to discuss here. Suffice to say, I was gutted. I was already halfway into my training and this wasn't just a spanner in the works, it was the entire complement of tools thrown into the works!

The prospects of missing out was very high, I resubmitted my application with a lot more documents this time around. Heck, if this didn't get my Visa approved, that was that! I wouldn't be going. Another long uncertain wait and with the days counting down, I was beginning to fret. But the training had to be kept going. Surprisingly 2 weeks out from race day, I finally got an email for my Visa approval. I was ecstatic! It was on. Now I started fretting about the double attempt itself. No excuse out of it now.

With the vaccination documents, DPD declaration, flight and accommodations all sorted out, all I had to do was wait. It was still nerve wracking cos my usual GCM Team MY team-mate, Jamie was still waiting for his approval. From the 5 of us, he was the last one still waiting and I was worried for him. But the Visa Gods finally relented and he got his approval a few days out from race day! With that, there would be 6 of us on the flight to the Gold Coast. Sadly, it was a small crew heading out as many weren't successful with their Visas.

We took Scoot out to Singapore before flying to the Gold Coast. It was a long journey from the time I left the house, almost 15 plus hours later before I set foot on the Gold Coast again. It was good to finally be able to travel and the weather was pretty good upon our arrival, which bode well for race morning in 2 days. I won't really bore you with the nitty gritty of the trip, after all, this is a race review anyway.

For what the Gold Coast has to offer, just browse through my previous years postings purely on the things you can do, and it's a hell of a lot, mind you and also some hidden gems the wife and me discovered. Sadly, she wasn't with me this year as she wasn't prepared to go through the Visa hell I went through but we're already planning for next year, though that is a story on its own.

Jamie and me put up at Novotel Hotel, smack in the centre of Surfer's Paradise and the rest of the crew got a nice apartment fronting the beach, not too far from us. We made plans to meet up at the race expo later in the day to pick up our race kits and have dinner. Went thru my usual antics around the expo, bought my usual Asics event tee, something I do every year.Once we were done, we headed for an early dinner and called it a day. It was after all a long, long day of travelling.

My hopes for a dry race day was dashed when I woke up the next morning to drizzle. Decided to still lace up and go for a short loosening of the legs as I hadn't run at all the week prior to arrival. Besides I needed my vain shots ... hahaha! Couldn't really do much cos the drizzle got heavier and the wind that came with it, made being outside very miserable, so headed back to the hotel for breakfast after which Jamie and me decided to head to the Elite press conference held at a nearby hotel. 

These press conferences are always great. It's not always you get to mingle with the likes of Stephanie Bruce, Jess Trengove, Yuki Kawauchi, Lindsay Flanagan, Jo Fukuda, to name a few, close up. Took the opportunity to take pictures and chat with them and headed back to meet the rest of the gang for lunch and then stay off my feet as much as I could. 

It was to be an early night for me since I had a 3.00am wake up call to head to the race start for my half marathon. As expected it was not to be a dry race cos it was already raining the moment I woke up. Got dressed, prepped for the race, sent the wife a text to calm my nerves (cos I know she'll always have some wise words of wisdom for me) and went down to get the complimentary shuttle provided by Tourism and Events, Queensland (TEQ) and headed to the Broadwater Parklands. 

From my previous wet start in 2019, I knew things were going to be tough, cold and miserable if the rain kept up. We hung around the staging area to keep warm while waiting for race start. The race flagged off spot on time at 6am and it was still drizzling. I found it incredibly hard to warm up the body and the long 500m walk (cos of the sheer number of participants) to cross the start didn't help matters. 

Once I crossed the start line, it was off to a slow trudge to get the blood flowing and get some heat into the body. I was dressed very conservatively but it was still freezing. I knew it was going to be a tough race but didn't know how tough yet. At 6am, the support from the crowd was fantastic, considering it was raining, people were still out cheering everyone along. This is something I love about racing in the Gold Coast, the FANTASTIC crowd support.

So off I went into the cold awakening morning. I was able to keep to a nice, real slow pace at first. I wasn't really interested in speed nor how fast I would go cos I had another 42km of this the very next day and wanted to keep the legs as fresh as I could. But it was not meant to be. The chilling cold from the drizzle and wind practically crippled me to a crawl. My legs simply seized up completely! I've never felt my legs seize up like this in my years of running, here or anywhere else and I've ran in colder climates like Seoul and Kyoto. From whatever running I could muster went down to just walking briskly. 

I was devastated, afraid I couldn't make the cut off which was very generous to begin with. I started doing mad calculations in my head (I'm not too good with math so some fingers and toes were used as well ... hahaha!) on how fast a walk pace I would need to do to make the cut off. After calculating I went on an 8 minute plus walk pace. I couldn't muster anymore to start running which was ridiculous really cos I can pull of a 5:02 pace to finish my virtual half back home in 1:46 and here I was grateful to be doing a 8 plus walk pace! Such a disappointment. No excuses for this, it boils down to lousy training. 

But I kept going. I said to myself even if I had to crawl in last, I would NOT stop! The rain didn't let up. It was on and off. Hitting the 15km mark, one of the marshals came to me and said, if you run past this 15km marker, I'll let you through cos you're a few seconds off the cutoff here. I was shocked that I was lagging behind. So, I ran and as I ran pass, she shouted, you have 7 mins to the next marker before cut off. The stare I gave her could have frozen Lucifer himself .. hahaha! 

But with that warning I kept running as far and as long as I could to make that 7 minutes cutoff which I succeeded. At least the crew manning this marker was more helpful and told me I had 3 extra minutes in the bag. Whoa, I pulled back some minutes. Suffice to say the last 5km was hell on earth for me, trying to finish before the official cutoff. The crowd along this stretch was as always phenomenal. They kept urging, cheering, screaming and shouting at me to keep going but I couldn't put their enthusiasm to good use, I was practically moving on momentum by then. 

Soon enough, the welcoming sight of that last 250m left turn came into view and with every ounce of energy I could muster, I switched into a slow stride until I crossed the finish with 7 minutes, yes 7 whole minutes before the cut-off which put me somewhere around 3 hours 23 minutes for the Asics Half Marathon, not something I'm very proud of but I did it, I achieved one of two feats putting me in contention for the next. Now that would be the main attraction for me but I'd have to do some crazy strategy change later in the day when I get back to the hotel.

A big thank you to Jamie and Cheong for braving the rain to lend some support and for waiting for me to finish even though Jamie was on the verge of speed dialing my wife to ask her where I was ... hahaha! The journey back to the hotel was painfully slow and all throughout the tram ride back, my mind was how the heck I was going to pull off tomorrow's marathon. I was already in so much pain at the moment. I needed to recover and I needed to do it fast. 

I won't lie, thoughts of not starting were already swirling through my head. My legs were a mess, my confidence shattered, my entire being was in shambles. If today was hard, tomorrow seemed near impossible to achieve. But then, I didn't want to disappoint the one person who put her trust in me that I could pull this off, my wife. All through training, she never once doubted I would find it in me to get through this. So, I put all the uncertainties aside and let tomorrow unravel itself on its own. Whatever tomorrow throws at me, I'll face it head on. After all, to quote my wife. BRING IT ON!

For today, I'm just going to enjoy getting through Race 1. My thoughts on Race 2 in the next upcoming post. Don't want to bore you with two long postings at one go :)