Forward Thinking: It's all in the mind

Jacqueline Smith was amongst the competitors in this year's Auckland half-marathon. Photo / NZ Herald

Before sitting down to write this I had to do some back bends and massage my hamstrings.

I'm finding being in a chair rather uncomfortable, as I get a shooting pain down my right side. And then a Ramones track pops into my head and I start to relive Sunday morning.

I wasn't physically prepared, nor was I mentally prepared to run the Auckland half-marathon. I hadn't even charged my iPod, let alone made a playlist. And I had to borrow a pair of sports socks from my sister.

See, I was one of those deluded people who signed up to the event earlier this year, believing that entering my credit card details would spur some sort of physical revolution.

I imagined I would beat the sun out of bed to pound the pavement every morning. I would beat the winter bulge. And I would beat my half-marathon time of five years ago - two hours and five minutes.

The months rolled by, the rain pelted on my window and I went for three, maybe four sluggish early morning jogs before I mastered the art of switching off my alarm while sleeping. Eventually I decided to stop kidding myself and just sell the ruddy ticket. But it turned out I wasn't the only one whose high hopes had drowned in the puddles of Auckland's winter. Trade Me was laden with half-marathon entries and, by the time I got on there, they were selling for next-to-nothing.

So I spammed my Facebook friends and when that didn't work, launched a direct marketing campaign targeting fit people. Two days before the race, I still had no bites.

The following sequence of events are sort of a blur. On Friday, I went to collect my race pack, still unsure who I was going to give it to. On Friday night, I went to a raging Halloween party until the wee hours. On Saturday, realising what I was in for, I had a carbohydrate-charged lunch, but then I drank beer and went out to review Brooke Fraser, till midnight. Four hours later, I woke up, pulled on my running shoes, shorts and the fluorescent yellow T-shirt from the race pack and took a ferry to Devonport. I might have been overwhelmed if I hadn't believed I was still asleep.

A gun went off. One foot moved in front of the other and the Ramones' Hey Ho Let's Go popped into my head, where it stayed for about 5km. Running through Takapuna, I formed a remix of Little Richard's Good Golly Miss Molly and Wanda Jackson's Let's Have a Party. The road narrowed and I realised my nose was at the same height as many of the flailing elbows. I could feel a stitch coming on. So I pulled a Julie Andrews and started thinking about my favourite things. Summer. Summer festivals. Realising the Foals were coming to town, my mind pressed play on their hit Cassius and left it on repeat for a good 15 minutes. I told my running buddy about my internal DJ. She told me she'd had Neil Diamond's I'm a Believer going for the past half hour, and all of a sudden I found I was mouthing along to it as well, but, reaching the line "what's the use in trying, all you get is pain", I flicked the skip button. At a killer hill in Northcote came Gin Wigmore's suitably pounding Oh My but the elation of the downward slope to the harbour bridge was to the tune of Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music. I only knew limited lyrics to that one, so the Ramones stepped in again to help me up the bridge.

Telling myself the hill couldn't be worse than moving house with a hangover, I reached the top. A speaker system pelting out Survivor's Eye of The Tiger gave me another boost as I rounded the 5km mark. There I was joined by my sister, who had pulled out of the event a few days before (due to an injury, not laziness). I begged her for a song for the homeward stretch. She rather daftly suggested Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday, which just made me queasy. I wanted to stop, but she told my brain that my legs could carry me to the end. And, staggering in to the dulcet tones of Talking Heads' This Must Be the Place they did, in two hours 12.

Sure, a serious training schedule might have saved me this uncomfortable leg pain, but they do say a big part of completing a marathon (or a half) is what's in your mind - I guess I'm just lucky my mind didn't dish out too much Cliff Richard.

-TimeOut