Running 56km is hard enough, running the distance after standing at the expo for 3 days is a little harder but doing all of it in the pouring rain and wind is something that wasn’t fun at all. The day started normally for me, I felt good and was glad that my legs didn’t feel heavy. I had slept well and managed to leave on time to drop Jen at the start. Traffic however was a nightmare and it took us over an hour to get there and Jen missed her start and I got to the start pen with 4min to go so I couldn’t find anybody I was suppose to be running with. The gun went off and I started with my plan, I wanted to shave 5sec a km off from the last year and run the Southern Cross Drive and not walk , that should have given me sub 5hrs.
I also decided to have some fun and run in all black and also run in my old favourite Oakley OTT glasses, was fun to hear the little kids get excited and call me spider man, made a tough day with some smiles from that.
All went well, I went through the 21km mark almost within the second and the 42km mark too, I ran southern cross well and had 5min in the bag in the bag when I got to 50km but at this point I knew I didn’t have it in me. I tried to push through but didn’t make it. 5hrs 08 min was quicker than last year but 9min slower than I wanted to run.
It was mentally very tough to keep pace when you running through deep water all over the road, you cold and wet and chafed badly, your shoes weigh a lot more than they should. My hats off to all of you that went out there and battled that course in those conditions, to those of you that ran well I salute you for making the day yours and for those of you that struggled to the line and finished, Respect and you can tick that off as one of the hardest days of your life and you survived it. Not sure if I will be running these kind of races again as I want to race Triathlons a bit faster next year and will probably just do 21km with the odd marathon thrown in. Running far is Tough and doing it fast seems incredible to me, the winner ran around 3’10 a km for 56km which blows my mind.
First row is 2011 and 2nd row is 2012.
| 1km | 6’43 | 6’43 | 11km | 5’02 | 4’54 | 21km | 5’41 | 5’53 | 31km | 5’41 | 5’27 |
| 2km | 5’03 | 4’46 | 12km | 4’58 | 4’50 | 22km | 5’19 | 5’18 | 32km | 5’26 | 5’45 |
| 3km | 5’12 | 4’49 | 13km | 4’48 | 4’49 | 23km | 5’24 | 5’23 | 33km | 6’16 | 6’19 |
| 4km | 5’05 | 4’54 | 14km | 5’12 | 5’24 | 24km | 5’13 | 5’08 | 34km | 5’32 | 6’11 |
| 5km | 5’00 | 3’55 | 15km | 5’02 | 4’52 | 25km | 5’09 | 5’00 | 35km | 5’22 | 5’14 |
| 6km | 4’56 | 5’04 | 16km | 5’00 | 4’57 | 26km | 5’47 | 6’02 | 36km | 5’02 | 5’40 |
| 7km | 5’03 | 5’00 | 17km | 5’10 | 5’08 | 27km | 5’59 | 5’19 | 37km | 5’04 | 5’13 |
| 8km | 5’04 | 5’02 | 18km | 5’12 | 5’05 | 28km | 5’41 | 5’32 | 38km | 4’54 | 5’46 |
| 9km | 4’57 | 4’42 | 19km | 5’02 | 5’18 | 29km | 5’19 | 5’21 | 39km | 5’10 | 5’18 |
| 10km | 4’58 | 4’46 | 20km | 6’00 | 5’35 | 30km | 6’08 | 5’57 | 40km | 5’33 | 5’29 |
| 41km | 6’02 | 6’22 | 51km | 5’32 | 5’47 | ||||||
| 42km | 6’10 | 5’55 | 52km | 5’10 | 5’17 | ||||||
| 43km | 5’46 | 5’46 | 53km | 4’33 | 5’23 | ||||||
| 44km | 5’59 | 6’07 | 54km | 7’16 | 6’23 | ||||||
| 45km | 11’00 | 7’02 | 55km | 7’00 | 6’10 | ||||||
| 46km | 10’47 | 7’18 | 56km | 7’10 | 5’54 | ||||||
| 47km | 4’22 | 5’58 | |||||||||
| 48km | 4’22 | 4’46 | |||||||||
| 49km | 5’54 | 5’35 | |||||||||
| 50km | 6’53 | 6’30 |
Nice report! Like your “no excuses” description of a tough race and day out. Refreshing. So sick of reading a report and having to wade through pages of why the “athlete” didn’t perform.
Thanks Buddy, I hate that too and unless something went terribly wrong I always just right it off to doing the best that i could on the day…we can’t all win…ha haa