Gold Coast Half - Mission Accomplished

I apologise for the amount of time this report has taken. Life has been
bloody busy for the last fortnight, but I'll explain that in my next
blog entry.

I love the Gold Coast Marathon festival. Community support, a bloody big
Coolrunning shindig and a well organised run for whatever level of
fitness you are at the time. It's a top event.

This year, same as last, I opted for the half marathon. This time,
however, I had company.

DJ and I went up to Brisbane on the Friday morning. DJ has a number of
friends and relatives in Brisbane and I spent Friday and Saturday
meeting said friends and relatives in amongst a bit of tourist
frolicking at Southbank. It was a relaxed couple of day punctuated with
very short runs: a 5K recovery pace run on the Friday and a 3K gallop
with 2 * 500m 5 min K efforts.

We stayed with friends in Brisbane on Saturday night, and since I had
not picked up my kit I figured that we needed to get out of bed at
3:15AM on Sunday morning to make sure I got to the start line
comfortably.

I am continually amazed by what DJ will tolerate for my benefit. Normal
people do not get out of bed at 3:15 on a Sunday morning. DJ got out of
bed, drove me to the Gold Coast and waited for me to finish the race and
cheered.

After I got my stuff together I lined up with the two hour pace group,
being led by Coolrunner Ironbee (Mike) in his bee costume. Mike competes
in the costume to raise awareness about diabetes, a condition his
daughter is afflicted with.

I had an issue with the Garmin at the start - it hadn't found a
satellite by the time the race started, and I also hadn't reset it from
the last run, so I didn't actually start timing until about 30 seconds
after I passed the start line.

I ran with Mike for the first few Ks, and I felt pretty good. After the
usual slow first kilometre in the traffic jam we started picking up
10-20 seconds per kilometre, and we had a couple of minutes up our
sleeve by the time we hit the turnaround. For the first half of the
race I dropped behind Mike at each drink station but caught up over the
next kilometre.

At the turnaround I was feeling OK, but not great. I made the decision
that I would not attempt to catch Mike after each station. We had
another pacer following behind, so the policy became to stay in front of
that pacer. This plan worked well until about 16K, when I was starting
to struggle, and had a strong desire to walk. I knew I still had a
couple of minutes in the bank, so I took walk breaks at the last three
drink stations to make sure the water hit the spot.

I was doing it tough in the last few K, but once I saw Jen and
Vegie-Girl (cheer squad number one) I knew I was on the home stretch.
Next came the primary cheer squad 700m from the finish - another cheer,
and 200m from the finish I spotted my true love, for whom I declared my
love and continued on to a finish I suspected was about 1:59, and turned
out to be a net time of 1:59:11. Mission Accomplished.

The rest of the day was spent cheering in the cheer squad with DJ before
a great time at after race drinks. Mouse and Nite Time Runner were kind
enough to allow me to use their hotel shower. Guys, may I offer my
thanks on behalf of everyone on the 6:00PM flight I took home.

As I said at the start I love this race. I'll be back next year,
injuries and finances permitting.