Run 37. 1977 VFL Grounds: Part 7. MCG. 8/09/2019.
In 1977 the MCG was the home ground to Richmond and Melbourne, hosted the Centenary Test match and a drawn grand final. Definitely a destination run.
Moved my weekend run to the Sunday as a result of bad weather and having to assist my wife due to a bike incident on her Saturday morning ride. And Saturday afternoon was out due to a master class on making sports drinks. (Didn’t realise how many ingredients go into making Gin) On the Friday night I went to the Geelong – Collingwood final with 93,450 other people. It took me 14 minutes and 20 seconds to get from gate 3 to the Richmond station, a distance of around 600m. At that rate I would have completed a half marathon in 8 hours 22 minutes and 53 seconds, although I’m pretty sure I would have missed the cut off.
On a quiet Sunday morning, with very few people around, I was able to get from gate 3 to the station in only 3 minutes and 5 seconds. What a difference a couple of days (and tens of thousands less people) makes.
I broke the run into thirds and tried to run an even pace to keep my heart rate below 155. This pretty much worked for the first 14km but then I got to the Punt Rd hill. Even walking up that hill won’t get your heart rate down, so I had to concede that wasn’t possible. But it quickly recovered on the downhill section. Overall controlled my heart rate and ran 1:50:44. Happy with that.
My Three Learnings
Timing is everything. Avoid crowds.
Gin is basically fermented sugars and botanicals, perfect sports drink.
Punt Road hill is a bad place to try and control your heart rate.