Simon Neate Marketing Admnistrator Sport Bay of Plenty

Sustaining a sports injury is a frustrating experience and there's always a period of reflection that accompanies it.

This week I had some bad news on the injury front just two weeks out from the Fielding Marathon – a race I've spent the last three months and hundreds of hours building toward with the sole goal of running under three hours.

Although an arbitrary figure, the sub-three marathon is something of a benchmark for the recreational runner. Although the top Kenyan might be nearly an hour up the road and several regional races in NZ are won in the 2:30 range; only approximately 2% of 42.2km finishers will ever go under 3.

In a 2012 analysis of finishers' statistics - Runner's World Magazine noted (http://bit.ly/1MPHAHm),

'It's damn rare. According to Running USA, last year some 518,000 runners finished U.S. marathons. About 2 percent of them ran under 3 hours. And those 2 percent busted their asses to get there, I promise you, every last one of them. They also were fortunate. Because even after all the miles, all the speed work, the hills, the drills, the long runs, the pain….Even after all of that, a sub-3:00 marathon can be elusive.”

And so it has proved for me.

My brief flirtation with distance running began in Wellington in about November 2012 after a Facebook conversation with my three younger brothers. What started as an innocent discussion about swimming quickly escalated – as it always does, into a typical and extremely funny game of sibling one-upmanship; focusing on each-others lack of athletic ability. This went on for a while and by the end of the discussion a plan was hatched – we would race an aquathon (swim then run) when were all home in the Mount for Christmas.

Being the older brother there was no way I was going to allow myself to lose so I spent the next few months with Wellington as my training ground - swimming laps at Freyberg Pool or in the harbour at Oriental Bay, running along the waterfront and up and down the many hills and utilising the City's very exploitable free gym trials.

Unfortunately my brothers hadn't taken ‘the challenge' as seriously as me and come Christmas the race never eventuated. But my running journey had begun and I was hooked. Running came very naturally and the body's adaptions to the training intrigued me.

After a few more months I signed up for and completed a half-marathon in 1:39 and surprised myself in a marathon running 3:15. After this I was convinced sub-three would be a formality in my next attempt.

Easier said than done and since then nearly two and a half years have passed and I've dropped my half-marathon time by over fifteen minutes, yet the sub-three has eluded me.

In Rotorua in 2014 I was on pace through the 28KM mark but came unstuck due to a knee injury and didn't finish. Later that year in Auckland I got to 30KM under goal pace but the same injury returned and I had to walk most of the last 10KM, hobbling through the finish in 3:58.

This year I won't even make the start line.

That's sport I guess. Savour the good – learn from the bad.

The journey continues.