Can you cram your City2Surf training into 10 days? I’m racing to find out

What a difference a year makes. This time in 2023, I was approaching the end of six disciplined weeks of training for the City2Surf, buttressed by an extended Dry July. I finished a 65-kilometre walk from Manly to Bondi in one weekend, and on race day, I posted a personal best time of 69 minutes and 39 seconds, or 4.55 minutes per kilometre.

Fast-forward 12 months and things aren’t looking so rosy. Dry July started halfway through the month and was aborted before its end. It turns out industrial action and sobriety don’t really mix. Meanwhile, my training has been haphazard at best. I’ve still been running five or six kilometres fairly regularly, but haven’t built up the distance like last year.

This Sunday’s City2Surf will see 90,000 people run from the CBD to Bondi Beach.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

The stakes are high. At a certain age, improving your City2Surf result becomes something of an obsession. It feels like going backwards would be an admission of defeat; a capitulation to the cruelty of time. As long as you’re running faster, you can’t really be getting older.

So when I found myself 10 days out from Sunday’s race with startlingly little preparation under my belt, I began to panic. After all, your results are public: anyone can look them up. You can run, but you can’t hide from the time you run.

Faced with possible humiliation on the finish line, I sought help from Justin Merlino, an accredited sports and musculoskeletal physiotherapist with Stadium Sports Physiotherapy. What could I do to cram for the City2Surf, I wondered, like a student swotting for their final exams?

Merlino’s initial response was brutal, but expected. “The preparation really has to be done in the months before,” he told me. “There’s no quick fix, there’s no shortcut. You can’t really play catch-up in that [final] week ... If the work hasn’t been done, that’s just something you’ve missed out on.”

Preparation is important. But what do you do if you’ve neglected your training regime?Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

To me, that sounded like a challenge. But Merlino insisted the best way to train was to build up slowly, increasing your weekly running volume by no more than 10-15 per cent. “Otherwise you’ll risk being fatigued by the time you get to the start line.”

I ignored his advice almost immediately. Last weekend, with seven days to go, I dragged myself out of bed for an 11-kilometre run along the foreshore from Glebe to Elizabeth Bay. All was going well (below five minutes per kilometre) until the humbling climb up Wylde Street into Potts Point. After 10 kilometres on the trot, it’s tough. But so is Heartbreak Hill. And everyone knows if you want to post a good time, you can’t slow down on the road out of Rose Bay.

Happily, Merlino begrudgingly accepted my argument that I needed to test myself on a longer run before the City2Surf. “You’ve got to make the jump somewhere, which is probably better than making the jump on the day,” he concluded.

I contemplated another mid-week run of 12 or so kilometres just to edge up to the City2Surf’s 14. But sanity (and laziness) prevailed. Instead, my mind turned to last-minute tips and tricks. Surely, there was some kind of intervention I could make in these final days to boost my speed? Justin was again sceptical, insisting “fitness and conditioning doesn’t come overnight”.

There’s much conjecture about the benefits of carb-loading the night before a race – and who would turn down an opportunity for a giant bowl of pasta – but Merlino dismissed that too. “My view is you keep it consistent,” he said. “You don’t want to have a big protein meal the night before or morning of because that is slow to digest and can sit heavy in your stomach. I’d keep your meals pretty much the same as you have been doing.”

Justin also underlined the benefits of eight hours’ sleep in the nights before the race, and cautioned against overeating on the morning of the event. That’s fine by me, I said – but what about a coffee? Blissfully, that’s all right – even recommended. “Coffee has been shown to enhance performance. It gives you energy for the race, I think that’s totally fine. I wouldn’t have it with much milk. A short black or a long black, that’s OK.”

A good warm-up is also important, Merlino said, especially in August when it’s still cold. Dynamic stretches are better to get the blood flowing – leg swings, squats, calf raises, high-knee drills or a crab walk “to get your glutes switched on”.

As the weekend approached, I felt better, though still a little anxious. Pride was on the line here. Not to mention the spectre of ageing. But one of Merlino’s passing remarks stuck with me. “Some people have that natural ability to pull it out on the day,” he said.

Of course! The crowd, the occasion, the spectacle – the City2Surf is a day like no other. And what level of training could possibly be more powerful than the fear of failure? Is there a better motivator than the threat of humiliation? Perhaps I could propel myself across the finish line fuelled by shame alone.

Mind over matter – isn’t that what they say?

Michael Koziol is the Sydney editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

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