(Not so great) Great Southern Bolt.

Last year I flagged the Great Southern Bolt as a goal race, trained real hard, and for all my carrying on had a pretty good run. This year I didn’t, I didn’t, and I didn’t. What a fucking shit show.

Weeks before the race when I sign up, I put ‘Wanker’ in as my name to appear on my bib, and… accurate. So. Fucking. Accurate.

When, like me, you’ve got a background of running marathons and ultras, it’s easy to take the half marathon a bit for granted. And let me just say, this can be a massive fucking mistake because a half marathon can fuck. you. up. Like this one did to me today.

First there’s the drive out there which takes almost as long as it takes me to run the race, and my now familiar ritual of stopping at the servo near the Victor turn off for a Gatorade and a nervous not really worth the effort bog because I know there’ll be a line up at the event porta loos and honestly, as bad as using a servo crapper after someone’s shot up heroin in there is, it’s still better than using a portaloo after 500 other runners.

Despite my ‘comfort stop’, I get to the finish line nice and early and make my way to the bus and gotta say, I’ve either stacked on way more weight than I realised or I’m in a bus for fucking midgets, because what. the actual. fuck? My knees are jammed in against the seat in front of me and let’s just say, I’ve had lap dances with less contact than I had with the guy who sat next to me.

We bus it to Myponga where the race starts and it’s actually not too cold. Until we get out of the bus and I lose my human blanket companion. Then it’s fucking freezing. I mean the temperature is not too bad, but the wind chill of the gale that’s blowing straight off the Antarctica is fucking bullshit. To the point where when we make our way to the start line there’s literally someone standing on top of the weight to hold the inflatable starting arch down, and I suppose I should just be flattered the wind wasn’t any stronger and they didn’t ask me to weigh it down.

We take off, just as mother nature decides to give us a bit of a ‘fuck you drizzle’ to send us on our way, and as I turn the corner about a hundred metres in, I almost do myself a catastrophic ballsack injury on the traffic cone that, despite being bright fucking orange and almost waist height, I manage to not see until the very last minute when I take evasive action inspired by my old break dancing days. And “you’re welcome!” to the people behind me who see my last minute manoeuvre and are able to avoid the same fate.

There’s a wistful look at the bakery, imagining all sorts of baked delights inside, but no, it’s 20 and a bit kms of road for me.

It’s not long before I spot Prison Break Guy, who I first met at this event last year, up ahead. He’s about 100m ahead of me so I put the foot down to catch up and take a stupid photo, and honestly, this is pretty much the last time I show any sort of pace or enthusiasm for life in general for the rest of the race.

For some reason, (probably because I haven’t trained partly due to injury and partly because I’m a lazy can’t), everything is hard. The first few kms getting to the nice downhill bit is unexpectedly difficult, and the downhill bit which I actually bloody loved last year is nowhere near as loveable this year, which may have something to do with the gale force headwind and bloody hell. Little do I know about half of the race will have this stupid fucking headwind, and despite running in different directions at various times, about 90% of the other half will have it as well.

I see a friend and I whinge about the wind, and she says yeah, maybe I should run behind you and lady, that is really cruel to suggest I am big enough to be a wind break. But also accurate and a really good idea. She decides not to do that, and instead just runs off and leaves me behind.

Oh, wait, backing up for a second. So a confession. My injury. It was… ah…. look, I admit it, it was a… splinter.  And shut. up. I know what you’re thinking. How is a splinter an injury if you’re older than five, but honestly, I had a splinter in the bottom of my foot and when you get to a certain age where your eyesight is shit and so is your flexibility, trying to get a splinter out of the bottom of your foot by yourself becomes a biological impossibility. And this was no ordinary splinter. It took me four visits to two podiatrists, both of whom cut my foot open with a scalpel, to try and get it sorted. So yeah, my preparation for this race wasn’t ideal.

Now, where was I again? Oh, that’s right, coming down the hill running nowhere near as fast as I should be. I pass that Buddhist temple that still isn’t finished after about 20 years and, thinking about my own renovations, I feel their pain. Must definitely be using the same tradies I am.

20 years and still not finished. I hear ya.

Right before the race started I did my traditional re-tie my laces so they’re nice and firm and don’t come undone mid-race, but I must have been a bit over enthusiastic because now I’m struggling to feel my feet and it reminds me of how they say if you sit on your hand and wait for it to go to sleep before you have a wank, it feels like someone else is doing. Can’t confirm or deny that, but can confirm if you start to lose feeling in your feet during a half marathon, it does not feel like someone else is running it for you.

We finally get to the bottom of the downhill section and are about to take a lefty to the beach when someone tells us the front runners all went straight up oopsie daisy for them. Even though they’re probably already finished by now while I still have about half the half to go.

I’m already in a world of pain on the way to the beach, and I’m genuinely considering pulling the pin as I know I’ll be passing the finish line at the 12km mark. And that’s before we get on to the beach and take a righty to head south and holy. fucking. shitballs. That wind is now a category five hurricane and I’m pretty sure I’m actually going backwards now. At the start of the race a few of us had a laugh about how shit the headwind was on the beach at the first ever Great Southern Half and today Mother Nature is like “hold my beer” because come. on. And for all my stupid comments, cannot even tell how hard it was running into that wind. For me.

I mean, lots of leaner people just sliced through that like the Australia II in the America’s Cup that time. But I’ve got the surface area of a main sail, and it is not smooth sailing for me. It literally reminds me of the time when I was a kid and the neighbours were squirting us with the hose as we rode past on our dragsters, so on my next lap I took a brolly with me which worked really well when the umbrella was facing forward but as I went past and moved it around to the side and it caught the air… well, let’s just say physics, or common sense, has never been my strong point. So yeah, it was like that.

As I run past the finish line with nine kms to go I try and tell myself the rest of the course might be more sheltered from the wind and no, it is not. So it’s seven more kms of wind, wind and more wind followed by some wind, until we finally drop on to the beach for the final few kms heading north and fuck me, we finally get a tail wind, by which point I’m so fucked up I can’t even enjoy or take advantage of it.

I push on trying to at least get under two hours, (which would be a full 15 minutes slower than last year), which I do not manage to do, but when I cross the line and the MC says “Sputnik is a poo poo head” over the PA I at least chuckle that I had the foresight to write something epic on my entry under the ‘bio’ section.

This year they’re doing free engraving of your time on the back of the medal, and it’s a ‘no’ from me.

Look, it’s still a great event, but that wind can eat a big bag of dicks.

After I get home and sleep for a few hours, I’m chatting to a friend on socials and I say “fuck, I should have done the 12km” and she says “you said that last year” and I really am a slow learner aren’t I?