Melbourne Marathon

This was my second barefoot marathon in 4 weeks.  What could possibly go wrong, I thought?  In any case, I'm here and I'm going to have a crack.  I've spent too much time in bare feet not to take advantage of it.

The morning of the race I was up early because I had no idea where the baggage drop off was.  Well, I thought I had half an idea so headed for the start line with about 30 minutes to spare.  This, of course, turned out to be a mistake as for the life of me I could not find out where it was!  I was running around everywhere looking for it and thankfully, with only 5 minutes until race start, I saw someone else running to drop stuff off so I followed them and found it.  I was completely panicking that I wouldn't have my pluggers waiting for me at the finish line!  All good, that was sorted but now I had 60 seconds to get back to the start line before the race start!

Thankfully I was only a minute late to the start so I was able to kick off with a bulk pack of slower runners.  I was just feeling an enormous sense of relief I found the baggage drop.  Anyway, I was in the race so all was well.  Within the first few kilometres I already had several people in amazed disbelief I was running in bare feet.  I got chatting with a guy I paced with last year which was a nice way to warm up.

By the 10km mark the sun was up and the wind was very light so it panning out to be a perfect day.  I was keeping a low 5 minute pace but my legs were feeling a little tired so I wasn't sure if I should keep this pace or slow down.  I decided to keep this pace for as long as I could and pressed on.

Hitting the St Kilda waterfront is always a highlight of this course.  I love the long out and back in front of the ocean.  Up until now the road surface had been awesome but it started to get really abrasive.  Either that or my feet hadn't fully recovered from Sydney which is also just as likely.  I was now looking for smooth opportunities and even eyeing off the footpath.  I stopped for a quick toilet stop about 25km and checked the soles of my feet.  Things looked OK so I just pressed on.

Soon after the 25km mark I hit a really big wall and completely blew up.  My pace faded in spectacular fashion from 5 min/km to about 6 min/km.  I had a bit of a laugh to myself and thought, well, only 17km to go so might as well settle in for a slow one.  Soon after I felt every barefoot runner's worst nightmare—a big soft patch under my foot.  I immediately freaked and thought I must have missed a blister through my dirty feet and it was now really big.  After stopping in a panic I looked under my foot to find a really swollen red patch that looked like death.  My heart sank, I thought there's no way I can finish on that, I will tear my foot into pieces.  Then it occurred to me I wasn't in any pain so I looked a little closer only to find out it was a red gummy bear!  I peeled it off, tossed it to the kerb and kept pressing on in much better spirits.

Heading back for the CBD around the 30km mark I was with a bunch of new runners looking for a 4 hour-ish finish so I kept with them and we had a good chat.  Over the final little hill at 35km I saw someone handing out pickle juice samples and having only heard about these a few days ago, I eagerly grabbed one and had a sip.  As a pickle lover it was actually really good.  I have no idea if it helped me out at all but it was definitely worth the experience.

Now at the 40km mark I was absolutely shot.  My times had slipped to about 6:30 per/km but I was still having a ball.  I passed a guy that was running in bare feet holding his shoes.  He said the shoes were hurting him so he had to take them off.  He told me he'd never run in bare feet before.  With only 2kms to I don't know how well he finished but I'll bet his feet were trashed.

With only a few hundred meters to go I got plenty of hilarious comments from spectators about my lovely bare feet.  Now inside the MCG it was only 100m to go and man I was glad to see it.  I crossed the line in a tragic time of 4hrs 8mins and had a good laugh.  After things went bad all I could do was slow down and enjoy it, which is exactly what I did.

Naturally, the rest of the afternoon was spend burger and beer hunting, which is always great in Melbourne.  I love this city.

Race day stats: