Well, we finished it! Got up at 5:40 this morning, jumped in the car, picked Niall up on the way and parked on Bondi Junction. Got the train to North Sydney, with more and more runners joining at every stop. By the time we arrived at Milson’s Point the marathon and half-marathon had already started, so there was just the people doing the 10K milling about. That was still about 10,000 people apparently.

It was bloody cold in the shadow of the bridge, especially once we’d dropped off our gear at the trucks which would carry it to the finish for us. We stood around shivering and stretching, then Niall headed off to the front as he was going for a time. Met Billy and Lisa briefly, then the gun went. It took us about 7-8mins before we crossed the start line, but once we did all doubts and apprehensions disappeared and we plodded off along the course.

I was obviously caught up in the moment a litte, as I’d forgotten to go to the toilet before the start, and I also forgot to start my stopwatch. I only realised this about 2km into the race, so I had no idea how fast we were going. The run over the Harbour Bridge was quite nice, though there was a biting wind blowing across the course, so I was pretty happy to get onto the Cahill Expressway. Myself and Jacqui had settled into a nice relaxing pace and the kilometres seemed to pass quite easily. Next thing I knew we were heading up Macquarie St. and approaching the 5km drinks station.

They had toilets there as well, but there was a bit of a queue, and I figured I could hang on until the end, so I skipped them. Sure enough, about 1km later I started getting signals from my bladder that I had better stop soon, so I left Jacqui with instructions to keep going, and I ran ahead to find the next toilet, which turned out to be at 7.5km. Thankfully there were no queues at this one, which was a relief in more ways than one!

Jacqui had just passed the toilets as I emerged, so I caught up with her and resumed our normal pace. My left knee was starting to hurt a little, but it was little more than an annoyance at this stage so we kept going to the turn-around beside St. Mary’s Cathedral. We were now on the home stretch with a little more than 1.5km to go, the majority of which was slightly downhill. We had the last of our 5 stretching stops at the 9km mark, and it was plain sailing from there until then finish on the Opera House forecourt. We crossed the line with 1:17 showing on the clock, so allowing for the time we were waiting around at the start, I reckon our official time will turn out to be somewhere in the region of 1:08. Neither of us were remotely tired or out of breath, though my knee was starting to become more than an annoyance so I was glad to finish. Niall managed a very respectable 43:19 by his watch.

All in all, it was a lot easier than I’d expected, but I need to figure out why my knee went all weird. I’d definitely like to try another one and actually make a race of it. It feels good to be an athlete again ;-)

B: 57km – R: 16km – S: 1200m