Fast 5 with Sarah McKay
Sarah has been running for years, and with my running group for the past 5 or 6! She joined us after her partner David Downer introduced her to the group. It has been our absolute pleasure to see their partnership develop, with so many amazing international (and local) event experiences now under their collective belts. Now, they both have little Archie to take care of! So we asked Sarah to be our next FAST 5 star because of the way she handles the little and big things in running and life that do disrupt our equilibrium.
As a coach, I have always admired Sarah as a runner, and I would describe her as a data driven athlete. She knows her running pattern, her paces, what works for her, what doesn't. She can tell you where her pain points are, what she needs to do to fix them. And she gets on with it. She has had her share of disappointments, and I love her cool and calm attitude when things don't go to plan, including when that precious data goes haywire!
READ ON!
1. You've dealt with a lot of injuries over the past few years, can you take us through some of the more significant ones and how you dealt with those and then getting back to fitness.
The most significant were the Morton’s neuroma in my foot, and the hip impingement that came with some osteitis pubis. These are significant as they don’t just fade away and heal up, but are something I have to manage and are interconnected. The neuroma is a growth on a nerve in my foot, which causes pain like there is a stone in my shoe or someone is jabbing needles in my toe. My footwear choice and the gradual build up of mileage is key to keeping this in check.
The hip impingement is a biomechanics issue where my hip sockets are a bit too deep, which can cause the neck of my femur to bump the rim of the hip socket. It’s fairly mild in terms of impingement, and can be managed with hip strengthening and form work.
A few years ago I was preparing for my second Melbourne marathon. My run volume was high, I was hitting pace targets, and even won Sandy Point Half in the lead up. The neuroma then started to misbehave, and I thought I could just muscle through it as I only had a few key workouts remaining before taper. The compensatory change in my stride in this period led to the hip pain. On race day itself, I had to pull the pin on Beaconsfield Parade, by then unable to bare weight on my leg, catching the demoralising bus back to the finish line. It was about 6 months before I was able to start running again.
2. Has having a child changed your attitude towards your fitness/running goals?
Yes, gone are the days where I can spend hours out on my own and then flop on the couch to recover. My goals right now are about longevity in the sport. A 4.8kg baby delivered with forceps has put me in the high risk category for pelvic floor disfunction.
3. Has that surprised you?
Not so much, my goals for fitness and running are always changing based on where I am with my fitness and my life. When work is hectic my goals might just be “run 2 quality sessions a week”. I try to keep my goals relevant to where I am and within reach. I don’t see the point of having a goal right now of running a marathon in X time. While I would like to do another one again, and at a decent clip, the unknowns between here and there are too great. So I start at that end point and work backwards to plan out what I need to achieve to get there. This results in having smaller goals along the way, keeping me motivated within that realm of achievability. Currently my goals revolve around the simplicity of getting some routine back.
4. Describe some events where things haven't quite gone to plan for you, and how you dealt with that?
Tokyo Marathon 2019. A race where I had a specific time goal in mind, as I was using it to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I generally have my watch set-up to auto lap every kilometre in a race. 2 minutes after I passed the start line my watch buzzes “1km”. Ermm… what? Clearly, I know I’m not running 1km in 2 minutes and setting a world record by a lazy 28 seconds. These big city marathons can be suspect to GPS issues, with your (not so) trusty Garmin struggling to secure a satellite lock in amongst the cavalcade of tall buildings. And in a city of 35 million people, there’s a few of those to contend with. I had planned on “running by the watch”, and hoping to stick around 4:50-55 min/km pace to hit my goal time. That plan was quickly trashed given I couldn’t trust the watch. I changed my watch screen to show race time only, and kept my eyes peeled for the 5km markers. I had done a bit of training at goal race pace in my lead up, and the rejigged new plan was:
to run at what goal pace had felt like in training
check the watch at the 5km marker
try to calculate my pace
adjust as required
repeat 7 times
Fortunately, my goal pace wasn’t a difficult one to calculate. The outcome? I achieved my goal, finishing the race in 3:26:30, a few minutes under the treasured BQ (Boston qualifying) time that had eluded me previously. My official 5km splits came in at: 24:16, 24:26, 24:32, 24:16, 24:18, 24:17, 24:15, 24:51. The slight drift at the end there thanks to a waterless gel giving me a stitch. Speaking of drift, final race distance according to the watch GPS was recorded as 45.79km.
5. What role does running play in your life, and how has having Archie changed your approach to running?
Running has been a central part of my life. My holidays are planned around what races we could do and fun places we can run. We’ve gone so far as to find an athletics track in a Mexican beach town to squeeze in a session. Running is also a mental escape. It’s how I find balance and process/find solutions to challenges at work. So if you see me out there and I don’t wave, I’m probably doing some mental gymnastics over some data, or visualising the audiobook I’m listening to.
Since Archie has come along running is less of a priority, but it’s still very important to me. While it is on the backburner for now, I do my best to make time for it. I still use it to de-stress, have “me” time, process things and get through some audiobooks, but my sessions are much shorter now. Partially because of pelvic floor rehab, partially because of general energy levels, and partially because I now have an adorable little man who needs me. My goals are much simpler currently, and I’ve had to forget my pre-baby pb’s. Targets like “run three times a week” or “get one quality run in per week”. I still have my data, but I obsess over it much less these days.
