Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Lucky Number 7 Marathon - Sydney

Well its been a long time between blogs but I have been keeping busy after finishing the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. Despite or maybe because of my disappointing marathon in Pittsburgh I decided I wanted to run another marathon in Australia in 2010 and to continue another challenge. That is, along with my goal of running the 7 continents marathon I also have a plan to run all the states and territories in Australia. I can then join the Australian All States Marathon Club :). At that point I had completed marathons in one state (Victoria) and two territories (Northern Territory and the ACT) so I thought Sydney Marathon in September would work out well.

After the Pittsburgh Marathon I had a week off from running and then had an easy month and a half of relaxed running. I also graduated from my Masters of Public Health which my sister and parents came to watch .

Before I knew it, there was only 12 weeks left till Sydney Marathon so I had to ramp up my training and start doing those really long runs on the weekend. The long runs are hard work but absolutely necessary to the successful completion of a marathon. Luckily for me I had training buddies to run with for all of my long runs and to share the yummy breakfast afterwards!! During that time along with my normal training runs I did a 30k race around Princes Park, and a 32 and 34km run along the beach.

I was really looking forward to the Sydney Marathon because: 1) I got to catch up with an old running buddy who had moved to Sydney 2) I stayed with a good friend and her husband and twin sons 3) I got to catch up with a running buddy from Antarctica 4) and last but definitely not least I was going to run the marathon with a good running buddy!

The Sydney Marathon starts at 7.30am, that's quite an early start particularly if you are taking public transport to get there. I was really lucky that the friend I stayed with was willing and able to drop me off at the train station- thanks Chickie! At this stage the nerves were definitely kicking in and I was again realising the enormity of running 42kms - that's a very long way to run just for fun!

I got to the race starting line with plenty of time to spare and as always the first stopping point was the queue for the toilets! As I moved forward in the queue I heard someone call out my name to discover that standing in the queue right next to me was a Dutchy from Perth who had run the Antarctic Ice Marathon with me last year. It was fantastic to catch up with him and to meet his wife who was running her first ever marathon with a goal time of under 5 hours in order to qualify for the Comrades run (I can happily report that they made their goal time with minutes to spare). We had a lovely time catching up and he promised me that on his next visit to Melbourne we would meet up at the Ice Bar - to relive our Antarctic experience.

Around this time I also found my running buddy who had generously agreed to run with me with the aim of completing the Sydney marathon in under 4 hours.... more to follow!