After my triumph of completing the 10km Rocky River Run, my fitness mentor and biggest fan ( & husband of course!) helped me set a new goal: to run the City 2 Surf in Sydney. A challenge for sure as this was not only a longer distance (14km) but also included a hill, named Heartbreak Hill …..
While I had been training along cattle pads, through barbwire fences, along corrugated gravel roads, over cattle grids and along fence lines in the lead up, my final run session before the race was in Launceston, Tasmania as I managed to fit the Federal ICPA conference in my itinerary.
We were fortunate enough to spend our pre race night in a hotel overlooking Sydney’s Hyde Park. This meant we could watch the elite athletes set out on the race course early in the morning from our room courtesy of the television coverage. This of course, didn’t do much to settle my nerves! We joined the 80,000 odd participants to absorb start line atmosphere. It was electric, exciting and motivating. I even learnt who Redfoo was!
While most people ran in their sweat gear, some had donned costumes. I passed a helicopter, quite a few Lego men, some army personnel and an odd cow or two.
The energy pre race was contagious and Rob & I were swept up in the ‘selfie’ fun. For the kids of course 😉
For 14km we ran with the masses. The crowd hardly thinned at all. Music played on most street corners, people cheered from their balconies and front gardens. Water points were swamped and any toilet enroute seemed to have a line of at least 20 desperate looking runners. Heartbreak hill was long and arduous and while this is what I’d expected I wasn’t well prepared for all the other little hills.
At around the 7km mark, I had a mental battle. Couldn’t believe I was sill enough to do being doing such a thing. Of course my running buddy told me to stop being so defeatist and ‘just keep bloody running!’ And so I did …..
We completed the race in 94 minutes …. a little slower than our goal of 90 minutes (or Rob’s challenge to me of 75 minutes!!) but complete it we did.
The marathon run was only half over for us as we had a flight to catch back to Brisbane.
The movement of big crowds via buses and trains was nothing short of amazing and we had to be very patient amongst lines of people.
After landing in Brisbane and collecting our five little cherubs from big sister Tess, we then motored the six hundred odd kilometres back to Rockhampton for mini school Monday morning.
Come Monday afternoon there was a great sense of satisfaction amongst us all!
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