Mini-mosmarathon

Mini-mosmarathon this morning and what a fantstic morning it was. Cold and drizzly and hard to get out of bed, but so glad I did because it was just a great event. I did it last year and really enjoyed it and this year Sarah wanted to come and do the 5km walk so we both rocked up just after 7am, entered into it and Sarah and Nat took off on the 5km walk at 7.30 while I had an hour to go before the 10k run at 8.30am.

Perfect time to do a 10km warm-up!

I wanted to try to get 20km in today, it’s the Sunday long run but the rest week at the end of a 4 week period so a faster but shorter long run before the next two weeks of maximum mileage before the marathon.

So I went and did a great 10km run around Mosman in the drizzle for 45 mins. Then came back to the start line just in time for the race and ran into a few people I knew: Squiggs who had lost Ben somewhere in the crowd, Sam from Balmoral Triathlon club and Simon an old mate from high school. Then the gun went and we were off. I felt pretty slow the first couple of kms, I had warmed up enough but just wasn’t hitting the high pace and was passed by a few people early. Around 4km I started to feel my pace a lot better and was going along at a great clip. I really got into my own past 6km where I was in the zone, breathing and striding well and starting to reel in a lot of the people who had passed me early.

I think my aerobic fitness from all the marathon mileage I’ve been doing kept my pace steady and even speeding up slightly as others slowed down. It was at this point the ubiquitous Mosman hills really became a part of the course with a few short steep ones and finally the long one right before the finish. That’s when I was the happiest with my performance, I gave all out and flew up the hill, easily caught and passed a whole bunch of people who had been ahead of me the whole run. Down the other side and around the corner to the finish chute I sighted the clock about 300metres away showing 39:25 and knew I needed to belt it to make sub-40mins, so I broke into a flat-out sprint and cruised over the timing mat with a yell of triumph as I did 39:4x.

I was just so happy to break 40 minutes for the first time in a 10km race, especially on a tough hilly course after a 10km pre-run! Feeling pretty damn good right now.

But it was great to see so many people I knew along the way, a bunch of people from Balmoral, Nat and Colin, the guys I ran with at the Great Nosh a couple of weeks ago, Simon, Sam, Dan and Juliette with their girls running the 2km kids run (man all those kids were so cute – the facial expressions on them as they ran as hard as they could were hilarious!) an excellent event and a really fun morning out.