www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptsec1meCe4

This was a personal milestone for me – my 40th City2Surf – and it just gets bigger and better every year without loosing any of it’s character.

The City2Surf is an ‘all in group fitness challenge’ and I know many people (myself included) use this event as a focal point to help them keep fit over the winter months.

Like me, thousands converge on Sydney to test their fitness, meet up with friends and enjoy a sunny afternoon relaxing on Bondi Beach.

This year a torn calf frustrated me six weeks prior to the event and with three weeks to go, it was still causing a problem, so I decided to rest it until the day. Unfortunately my conditioning suffered, but I basically came through unscathed. Under the circumstances I’m just glad I managed to do it in under 90 minutes.

I took my phone along and captured the day on video as I experienced it. Love to hear your stories too.

My First City2Surf in 1971

The City2Surf Route

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since I started blogging about my City2Surf training plan in 2009.

Finish gates 2009

Anyway, I had some great feedback from people last year via Facebook, Twitter and email, so I figure I might as well do it again this year.

The training program I set last year is still online and I recommend this as a great start if you are just starting off and you are injury free and want to stay that way!

I have a few friends who have indicated that they are prepared to give the City2Surf a go this year so I’ll put together a program tailored for them, (ie. people who don’t usually do any jogging and are a bit overweight).

My own training schedule will roughly follow the program I put up last year, but I’ll be substituting some elements of my 2010 training program.

But since the event a week and a half ago, I’ve hardly seen anyone out and about. I did my jog around the lake this morning and I saw only one other person jogging and an old couple walking their dog.

The post event vacuum and how to avoid it

When you train with a very specific goal in mind ‘“ in this case, to run the City2Surf, we tend to become highly focused on that one goal. Then, when the event has passed, there is a sense of relief but there is also a vacuum is created. (A vacuum being a space filled with nothing, not something that sucks up dust!)

Whenever you take anything away and don’t replace it with something else, there will be a sense of emptiness; perhaps you may even feel a sense of loss. That something doesn’t have to be a physical thing; it can be an emotion or a feeling, or a goal.

The key is to very quickly replace the activity or goal that you were focused on with another one. So, for all the people who are no longer focused on achieving a City2Surf related goal, now is the time to very quickly find a new health and fitness goal.

If you don’t focus on a new goal, what will happen is the time you were spending on training will get absorbed into your everyday life and before you know it, that time will be lost to you and you will also lose the health benefits you gained from all that training you did in the lead up to the event.

Find a new health and fitness goal today

If you were following along with my City2Surf training routine, you will have heard me say that the training process is an opportunity to develop good habits around a regular fitness routine.

Don’t stop now. If training for the City2Surf was your goal, now is the time to refocus. There is no better start to the day than to energise your body with some good healthy activity before breakfast.

Create a new goal, set your alarm and get up and get moving first thing tomorrow morning. If you can’t think of a new goal, don’t worry, get out tomorrow morning and go for a walk, and while you are walking, use that time to find yourself a new goal.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off

I find that it makes a big difference to my performance if I train with hills as opposed to training without them, but it doesn’t necessarily make a big difference whether I run all the way up or walk and jog up the hills.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FJD-eS2X8

This interval style (fartlek) of hill training works quite well for me because it means that my muscles get used to the action and the strain, yet my overall heart rate isn’t pushed too hard.

So that when it comes to a big hill in an event, such as ‘Heartbreak Hill’ in the City2Surf, I can generally jog up it with minimal discomfort. In fact, one year I remember running along watching the ground and the people around me so intently that I didn’t realise that I was going uphill until I was rounding the bend half way up Heartbreak Hill.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off

It was a very early start for us, as we lived in the Blue Mountains at the time, and my father always wanted to get to an event with time to spare, so we left at about 6am for the drive to Sydney. No freeway in those days, so it was a long drive along a single lane highway that meandered through Penrith, StMarys and Parramatta.

My mum took this photo of the first runners in 1971 coming past what is now the start area on Park Street

We parked in College Street and then walked to Sydney Town Hall to get our registration sorted out. Everyone had to sign in at the Town Hall and collect his or her number for the run. We’d never seen anything like this bustle of excited runners before. And then there was the smell of ‘Deep Heat‘, which as a small kid, was a new one for me.

The people handing out the numbers had number blanks and then the numbers were all stickers. As you signed in, they would record your number and make it right before your eyes with stickers for each numeral.

We got our numbers and then went back to the car to get out of our tracksuits and pin our numbers on. My father had to have a cup of tea. We never went anywhere without a thermos of hot water! Then we made our way back to Town Hall for the start. My mother was the designated driver and she watched the start and took photos before driving to the finish to meet us with warm clothes and a picnic lunch.

Those were different times; if you are going in your first City2Surf these days, don’t even think of parking in College Street and then driving to Bondi in time to meet your loved ones’¦ you won’t get near College Street, let alone park in it.

Onlookers watch the full City to Surf field head up to Kings Cross. There was no tunnel in those days so we actually ran over the top of the hill.

In the early days, the City2Surf started at George Street, right beside the Town Hall. So the run started with a short, steep uphill. I remember starting fairly close to the Town Hall steps on Druitt Street in what at the time I thought was a massive crowd of 2000 runners. A far cry from the 70,000 that take part today.

The City to Surf was 9.4 miles (15.12km) from Sydney Town Hall to Bondi Beach and you had to complete it in less than 100 minutes. A fact my father made very clear to me, as I would be running on my own for most of the run. For many years the roads were reopened to traffic after 100 minutes and if you didn’t finish in less than 100 minutes, your time wasn’t recorded.

It is a lot easier to run the City2Surf in under 100 minutes these days, because not only is the event 1.12 kilometres shorter, but you also don’t have to run it in Dunlop sandshoes which had absolutely no cushioning in them at all … and at least one of the hills is not as high! Kings Cross has a tunnel cutting through it, so you don’t have to run over the top as we did for a few years.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off