Insights from Guiding at Adelaide's City Bay Fun run

Rhiannon R is a sighted guide with Achilles Melbourne. This past weekend, Rhiannon R guided and ran alongside blind runner, Peter E at City Bay in Adelaide, South Australia. In this blog post, Rhiannon shares her experience as a sole guide in a busy fun run.

Pete and I run together a lot. We are pretty well matched for pace, but he is running strong ahead of his debut full marathon in Berlin in two weeks’ time. City Bay was hard work, and I loved it, but it confirmed something I’ve been thinking for a while: runners need to reconsider their use of noise-cancelling headphones, and my experience highlighted the importance of “bulldozers” in a blind running team.

Usually at big events in Melbourne, people with low vision or blind people are teamed up with a guide that they run side by side with, and also a second guide that we call a “bulldozer”. Bulldozers run a couple of meters ahead to let people in front know that we will be passing them, and also to keep a clearer line of vision for the side-by-side guide. Pete and I didn’t have a bulldozer, but I’ve lived in Adelaide and know it well. I knew the course would be wide open bitumen roads with few turns or obstacles to worry about. I was excited to go out for what I thought would be an easy paced 12km fun run on my fave kind of surface, and to have some laughs with Pete along the way!

On Sunday morning, we left our hotel at about 7:50am for our 1.2km warm-up jog to the start line. Outside I immediately got disorientated and we did a lap of the large T junction through Hindmarsh Square before I looked up and saw the Adelaide hills, then my brain kicked into gear and we turned back in the right direction. The race started at 8am but I figured we wouldn't want to be up the front where it would be too congested. The information pamphlet provided by the event organizers said that walkers and pram runners would start from 8:15am, so we jogged to the start to begin ahead of them. However when we got there, many runners still waiting to begin in waves taking off at 5min intervals, so we chatted with another runner to make sure we were in the right spot, jumped into the start chute with him, and took off over the start line at 8:20am.

The start crowd felt  relaxed and positive, and we began running up a long slow incline surrounded by many runners at a similar pace. As we turned onto South Terrace a man called out “Go Achilles!” which surprised us, and we speculated that perhaps he was from Melbourne too.

There aren’t many turns along the route in City Bay, and the elevation trends gradually downhill after the first small climb up from the start. I knew we were moving at a good pace but assumed we’d been caught up in the start crowd excitement. It wasn’t until we turned onto Anzac Highway, which most of the 12kms follows, and we were still running each km faster than the last that I mentioned it to Pete. He said he felt good and I checked to make sure he was happy to keep pushing the pace. With Berlin Marathon only two weeks after City Bay, I wanted to help him run as fast he could and gain some confidence from this event, but I was conscious that if he pushed too hard he could get injured ahead of his first ever full marathon.

The highway is a wide road and people really spread out across the lanes. We stuck mostly to the right but did a lot of people dodging. In a few spots the bitumen had some large long cracks, and I think each of us slipped into them at one point. Without a bulldozer to help with noting hazards and ensuring a clear running path, the bitumen cracks came up suddenly as they were impossible to avoid amongst the crowded foot traffic. We passed heaps of runners and only had a handful overtake us. We stopped at two drink stations at 6kms and 9kms for water, and Pete had a gel that he’s testing for Berlin.

With a few kms to go, we were approaching a wide bend in the highway and I knew we would soon turn off onto more narrow streets. At some point as we approached the finish line, we’d also have tram tracks to avoid, but also the walkers at the tail end of the half marathon event.

Our pace had increased again but I could feel that Pete was able to go even faster. My heart rate was high and I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. In my head I worried that he wanted to go faster but I was holding him back. Some negative intrusive thoughts tried to take over ‘You’re holding him back! What if you fall? Cramp? Vomit?’ But I had to block them out.

At this stage of the race, the biggest challenge on the course was navigating around people wearing noise-cancelling headphones. I was calling out almost constantly at this time “Please keep left, blind runner passing”. It was easier to try and clear a path than to keep dodging people, while also watching Pete’s feet to make sure he wasn’t going to slip into the tram tracks. I wanted to stay in the wider middle lane but there were too many people wearing noise cancelling headphones. People running with headphones weren’t able to hear me calling out, and were shocked or surprised as we squeezed past them. Sometimes other runners heard me and helped by calling out too, yelling louder than I was capable of. A woman pleaded for people to share the road. Some ran ahead and tapped the head-phoned people on the shoulder to move out of our way. I am so thankful for their help, and feel so much love for the people in the running community who are looking out for each other in these highly congested events.

I hesitate to discourage others from feeling a sense of enjoyment as I do from running. However, if you need the motivation of music to get out, please consider leaving noise cancelling headphones at home, try “open ear” or “bone conduction” headphones, or maybe just one earbud. Situational awareness is important in big fun run events, but also when we’re sharing day-to-day paths with pedestrians, bikes and alongside cars.

Most people around us on the course were conscious that they were sharing the road with many people. We had fun, brief chats with a few people we passed, and some expressed how they admired what Pete and I were doing.

I know how hard it can be to get out the door to run. Let alone sign up for an event. By getting out there we gain invaluable life experience, test our limits and learn lessons about ourselves. We are all part of a bigger community and need to look out, and listen out for one another.

When running as a sighted guide, the race is run at the pace of the person with low vision. It’s their effort and they should celebrate that. I’m there to ensure that they, and everyone around them on the course, are safe in achieving their goals. The best part of being in a running community is that everyone has the chance to uplift each other and keep others safe, just by simply being aware of their surroundings  I don't usually collect a race medal when guiding, but I did after running the 12km City Bay Fun Run in Adelaide with Pete. I’m so thankful to Pete for inviting me to run with him in such a beautiful city. I knew we’d have lots of fun, but the bonus of feeling strong and being able to challenge ourselves to achieve a finish time we were both happy with is icing on the frog cake (it’s a South Australian thing!)

We collected stunning finisher medals that are burnished silver with a spinning gold medallion in the centre, highlighting 50 years of City Bay, and proudly wore them all the way home on the plane back to Melbourne.