Sydney Half Marathon Race Report - Burn Baby Burn

21.1K in 2:06

Let me start this post on a positive note - I had a great day today.

I stayed at Sydenham last night so I could sleep a little later, and caught the train in. I saw an aquaintance (Rosey) on the train, and spent the trip in catching up with him before meeting up with the Coolrunners at the start.

I got chatting to Rooster just as we started to line up, and found myself committing a nasty running faux pas - I started right up the front. The day was to prove this to be very poor self seeding.

I started off OK, getting through the first K in 5:34 and the second in 5:15. I was trying to settle a little under 5:30 pace, and that was how the first eleven K went, but I had a fair idea I wouldn't be able to keep it up. I knew my HR was too high, but unlike Gold Coast, I just kept going in the hope that I'd be able to run through it.

I pissed down rain for a short while, and this set my shoes up for 15K of squelch. Yuck.

I tried to take my mind off the pain by spotting and cheering for Coolrunners, and this worked well on the "out and back" West City Link. At about 15K I was starting to worry I'd missed Luckylegs, Owl and Omni, when I heard a Kiwi accent yelling in the distance. All three of them came into view running together and we exchanged cheers.

By this stage I was hurting a fair bit and slowing considerably. The good thing about this was that I was passed by a host of really supporrtive people: Mr Coolrunning himself, Kevin Tiller gave me a cheer as he passed, Gronk encouraged me, Rosey ran a few K with me and a big highlight was running a few hundred metres with Christine, who I hadn't seen since we ran the entire marathon together the previous year.

The hills at the end were real killers, and about 2K from home I vomited. Soon afterwards I realised that if I didn't start walking I wouls end up on a stretcher, so I pulled the pin and decided to walk the rest of the way. I was misdirected by an official, and started walking with the 3.8K field, but luckily the lone representative of the Coolrunning Cheer Squad - Lulu directed me back onto the right path. Go Girl caught me with 1K to go, and she was also suffering. We walked together for a while, commiserating with each other. She recovered enough to start running again and showed genuine concern for my wellbeing - I must have looked a right mess at this stage. I ran the last 100m, but I could feel my legs cramping over just this small effort. I finished and started the long trek to the recovery area.

I wandered around aimlessly for a while, inhaled a coffee and queued for 20 minutes for my bag. Then I plodded back up to the Cahill Expressway to join Lulu and the growing cheer squad.

I had a great afternoon cheering and chatting with the fine group of people that made up the cheer squad this time. We stuck around until Horrie and Belinda went past, cheering everyone(but especially Coolrunners) before heading on a far too long walk back to the recovery area and then to lunch at the Orient in the Rocks.Had an excellent lunch with the excellent company of the usual suspects and a few people I'd met for the first time today. It was great to be around a bunch of people high on endorphins.

Eventually I headed off, and on the train back to Sydenham I struck up a conversation with a guy who asked how I went. He turned out to be another runner.

On the whole, a great day except for about an hour of feeling, well, pretty average.