Warning: Long post!

Wow. My first half marathon, and my first time ever running more than 18km, and I couldn’t have asked for it to go better.

In preparation for the race, and in light of my weeks of painful shin splints & tight muscles, I had a remedial massage on Friday afternoon. Yesterday I avoided doing anything that might be strenuous for the legs -including the groceries. Then last night I took an aspirin. It worked. Between the massage, rest, aspirin and race-day adrenaline, my legs felt great! I haven’t had such a pain-free run in more than a month!

Sunrise at the SMH Half Marathon (St Mary's Cathedral in the background)

I was a bit worried about the cold -I don’t do cold -and waited until 15 mins before race start to take off my tracksuit and put my bag in the baggage storage. Surprisingly though the temperature actually felt fine, which was a relief. Then I headed to the line of port-a-loos. My line took forever. Whilst waiting I was looking around, and managed to spot the other Kris in line too, about 15 port-a-loos down! Of course, her line was much quicker than mine! After I was done I headed around the crowd at the back of the start line, and managed to spot her again. Yay! It was great to finally meet you Kris!

We only had a couple of minutes left til the race started. There were nearly 9000 people lined up. I tried to get a shot of the crowd in front of us, but I’m a tad short for that sort of thing. You can vaguely make out people in the distance: (& you gotta love the long line of port-a-loos)

SMH Half Start

Yup, the start line was somewhere up there..

It took us about 6 mins to cross the start line. I said goodbye to Kris and her friend Venks, and set off. As with most races, it was hard to keep the pace slow and the buildings around us stuffed up the Garmin, which I had expected, but it made it difficult to know how fast I was actually going! The first kilometre was actually a bit slow at 7:03 due to congestion, but it was followed by 5:50, 6:09 and 5:41. 5:41! I was supposed to be doing 6:30/km!!

I managed to slow down a little after that, but still hit the 8km mark in 49:51, which is 5 seconds faster than the 8km race I did just last weekend!

Along the way I had fallen in with a group of 10 or 12 runners from Can Too who were being paced by a guy who promised to make sure they made it under the cutoff time. I was a bit worried about making the 11km mark before the 75 minute cut-off time too, so I decided to stick with them. In The Rocks, we passed a roundabout which had an interesting item in the centre. I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be a warning, a joke, or an artwork.. but I thought it was crazy awesome all the same. I paused to take a picture on the second lap (which is why there’s not many runners in sight, we were pretty spread out by that point).

Random artwork, or warning to drivers?

I had received an sms from my awesome support crew of two, Pip & Stacey, saying they were near the Hyde Park Barracks. The course passed this point 4 times over the two laps, so it was popular with the crowds, and I missed seeing them on my way into the Domain. The gardens themselves were as pretty as last Sunday, and the course was identical. Heading back out onto the street, I checked the official clock and was relieved to find it was at 73 minutes.. and it took me a minute to realise I was well under cutoff, given how long it took to cross the start line!

Heading back into the jungle of tall buildings messed up the Garmin again. Here’s an example of just how far off it got. Not only am I apparently running through buildings, but at one point I’m more than a block off-course! Thankfully I could correct the course manually once I got home. (The straight line at the bottom is where I had already started correcting it before I took the screenshot.)

Garmin Forerunner 305 in a jungle of tall buildings..

About the 13km mark I started to get tired. Until this point, I had only walked for brief moments, mostly to take a drink. I took my first actual walk break then, and in the 16th kilometre I decided perhaps walking for 30 seconds every kilometre would be a good idea. Except I was nearly at the 17th km marker, so I skipped that one. I lost my Can Too pace group about this time. I hit 18km and dropped to a walk, and was interested to see how my body felt -in my two 18km training runs, I had been pretty drained by now, and everything hurt. This time, I felt like I was only up to 15km or so. I considered this an excellent thing. At the final water stop in the Domain, I grabbed a cup to pour on my head, and then another one. I had slowly finished an entire 600mL bottle of water over the race, along with two gel packs at 1:15 and 1:45. This last bit of water must have been a bit too much -I felt sick for a minute or two. Walked for a few moments, but thankfully the feeling passed!

At this point I realised I only had about 2km to go, and my Garmin said I was at 126 minutes. I was blown away to realise this meant that I might make 2:20! I had been expecting I could do 2:30, but when a race calculator recently told me I could do 2:20, I had been dubious. Now I knew it was possible.. but 2km in 14 minutes meant I couldn’t do much walking -which by this point, I was wanting to do more of! I gritted my teeth, and only walked one more stretch -up the short but steep hill in the Domain, and ran the rest. Upon entering Hyde Park and I put everything I had into sprinting the last 150-odd metres to the finish line. I passed my personal cheer squad on the way and Stacey got a few great shots.

Flying through the air with the greatest of ease..

The sprint was long, and I rarely sprint. It took everything out of me. The last 30 metres or so I was on the verge of collapse -my lungs were burning and unable to keep up, and my legs felt like jelly, and I had the impression that if I had tried to slow down suddenly, I would have ended up face first into the ground. I gave those last few metres everything I had.

And my unofficial time, until tomorrow when results will be printed in the paper, was:

2:20:10!!!

I think official time might be a few seconds quicker.

I wandered for a few minutes, unable to stop walking completely at this point, and grabbed some more water, before calling and meeting up with my cheer squad. Pip took a photo of me:

Just Finished

And then we did a silly one:

Apparently Pip would prefer a bigger, rounder nose..

And then we headed across the park to meet up with the other Kris, where I found out she had sadly DNFed due to her sore foot. That sucked. But there will be more races.

Damage report: one blister on my left foot, and one blister on my right buttock (!!) where apparently my underwear were rubbing? The most bizarre part is that I visited the bathroom twice in the hours after the race without noticing any pain, until later this afternoon it got itchy and then hurt like hell when I went to scratch.. very odd! Impressively, that was all of the damage. Apart from general soreness of course.

All in all, a great race and an awesome time for my first Half Marathon. Bring on the next one!

********UPDATE*********

My official time was 2:20:08 -so slightly under what my Garmin said, as I suspected. Very happy!