Townsville Marathon with Michael Richardson
Last Sunday was the Townsville running festival, for his first marathon Michael Richardson did a great time and showed amazing calm and effort management. 3:00:30 !!! Sub 3h was at reach, either his GPS calculated a slightly longer distance (42,9km) or the course was a few hundred meters longer. I must add that on the 7 of june Michael became father of Thomas his second child, I don’t know how he managed to handle training and father duties! However Michael you proved to yourself how ready you are to tackle long distances, I think you have a lot of potential! Tarawera 100km is your next important goal and I think you will be a tough competitor!
Some stats of Michael training before we ask him a few questions :
Training peaks race day graph :
How did you marathon go? Marathon went better than i expected for my first time. What made you want to run Townsville marathon? Legs were feeling great again and saw it as a great challenge with plenty of time to train. What goal had you set for this race? Did you reach it? My goal was sub 3hrs, missed it by 31 seconds. my watch had an average pace of 4:12 kms but official clock had other ideas. Still so stoked with the result. How did you experience the training leading up to the race?
I really enjoyed the structure of the training, could not have accomplished this result on my own.
What is your favourite type of training session? The interval sessions, they smash you but you feel stronger for it. Also noticed my body changing with the long slow runs and it was interesting training with a hrm. What was your nutrition the morning before the race and during the race? Had a strong black coffee, 3 eggs scrambled on toast and humapro protein in 500ml of water at 330am. Had a gel every 25mins during the race, ran with a 300ml nathan bottle with one electrolyte tab in it and swapped for a new one every 10km. The 30km bottle had humapro in it and i took water at each drink station. What did you learn for this whole experience? You dont need to fear the distance if you have a realistic goal, a solid training program you can stick to and a good idea of the nutrition you will need to finish the race. Have you got new goals? 100km trail run in Feb next year is the next challenge What advice would you give to someone that wants to run a marathon for the first time? Make the commitment to yourself to register for one. Find a coach and talk about what you want to achieve together then get training and enjoy the whole experience. Get regular massages keeps you feeling great.
