In 15 years of running, I’ve never been to the Mothers Day Classic.

The event has been running for 29 years all across Australia and raises money for breast and ovarian cancer research.

Historically, there was an 8km and a 4km option and the event welcomed entire families to walk or run the course, raise funds or dedicate their efforts to a loved one.

In 2024 a 12km run was added and this year a half marathon was added to the line up in Melbourne, no doubt a result of the insane surge in popularity of running events since the pandemic.

Safe to say the smaller distances and the inconvenience of it being on Mothers Day meant I have never really looked twice at the event before.

The week of the race, when I should have been tapering for UTA, an Instagram competition post caught my eye and I threw my hat in the ring for a free entry. I didn’t think anything more about it until a DM landed in my inbox congratulating me on being selected and throwing a discount code in my direction.

Well it would be rude not to!

Was I meant to be running a half marathon a week before my A Race? No

Would my coach raise her eyebrows and shake her head in a way that is more unsurprised than surprised? Yeah probably.

But tapering has never really served me well. Running is too much of a coping strategy for me than it probably should be, so messing with the routine tends to do more harm than good, so I figured fuck tapering and carb loading (frankly I’m already 80% potato at this point), I’m going to protect my stoke and get to this race excited and motivated not puffy, sluggish and highly anxious.

So yeah, I signed up.

I hadn’t run a road half marathon since a fluked an epic PR at Ballarat Half in 2024.

If I was going in to race the thing, I’d be a little daunted by my previous effort, but that wasn’t the goal.

I was just going out for a longish tempo run. The goal was sustained effort for 1:45 to 2:00 hrs, fuel well, be smart, and feel confident to take on 100km next weekend.

The start was early, it was dark. 6:45 am.

The race village at the Alexandra Gardens and the course around the Tan meant parking around there would be slim to none and the race organisers encouraged participants to park at the Arts Centre.

Having not raced this before, I was there with plenty of time (45 min early) to pick up my bib, drop my bag and go to the loo, or so I thought.

As the half marathon was much earlier than the other events, everything except the toilet queue ran quite smoothly with very little queues or dramas. It might be their first half marathon but after 29 years these guys run a tight ship and it was all very well organised.

What I failed to realize was how far the start line was from the race village. So it was a bit of a run to the start and then I missed my wave.

There was a “fast/active” runners wave of people running under 2 hrs and a second wave departing 5 minutes later.

So annoyingly, I found myself waiting at the very front, at the tape, of the second wave.

Whilst the wait felt like forever, when they let us go I ran like I was Simba in trying not to get trampled in the opening minutes of the Lion King.

Of course, I didn’t look at the course before I entered either.

We started along the river before taking the sharp right up Anderson Street and around the Tan.

After passing The Shrine, we looped past the finish area and race village and headed out onto the Main Yarra Trail than runs along the shore of the Yarra River.

By the time we hit the trail, I had smashed straight into the back of the first wave.

To be honest, it didn’t really bother me at this point. I wasn’t racing, just trying to keep a 4:50 to 5:00 min pace.

There were some spots that were very narrow that slowed right down. I yelled out to keep to the left as it appeared a lot of new runners weren’t familiar with racing etiquette. They all were super apologetic and moved out of the way to let everyone behind come through.

(Those big headphones should be banned though!)

I chatted with a young lady named Maddison who was running her first half marathon and trying not to get to excited and run too fast.

We ran together for a few k’s before I started to slow and she went off.

With 5km to go, I hit another wall of runners, which I think were the back of the 12k.

This time I did not take it in my stride and lost a bit of momentum.

I struggled to get it back and felt like I was barely moving on the second run up Anderson St.

I pushed on as we went around The Tan again, now in the midst of the main 8km and 4km event, full of prams (those big ones that hold like 5 kids) and large groups all walking 5 abreast.

Then it was straight into the chaos of the finish line and the event village.

There was a separate finish chute for the half marathon and the other events but it funnelled into the same spot and it was insane. To be honest, I’ve never seen anything like it. You could have hung around for hours collecting free stuff and I’m sure people did.

Everything from snacks to promotional hats, water bottles and other knickknacks, there were lines everywhere for every type of freebie. There was even free flowers for Mother’s Day.

Overall, for a first running they did really well but they missed the two things that runners actually care about, the course distance and congestion.

The course was short, with most people getting around 20.8 or 20.9km.

Most races you will end up with a much higher distance (ie: 21.6 or 22km) because a regular runner isn’t taking the racing lines that the pro’s take which is how the course is measured.

There was also a lot of congestion on the underpasses and narrow walk ways on the northern side of the river.

Neither of these are hard fixes, add an extra wave and move the start line back half a kilometre.

The event itself has been running so long that the rest they have down to a fine art and I’d really recommend it.

Probably not if you are looking for a PB though, with 142m of elevation gain including the two trips up Anderson, there are much faster courses to try to rip on.

So now, it’s onto UTA!