Anyway it was a clear and chilly morning and I was surprised to see the amount of people in shorts and goosebumped legs jogging around the parking lot when I got there - there were easily a couple of hundred people! A really nice bunch, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to chat to many of them because I had to take off shortly after the run to get the car back to Sarah before 8.45am. I ran into Luke just after registering and we had a warm up together and then took off!
It was a two lap, flat asphalt course (with a few hundred metres of gravelly red earth) and I took off conservatively, a loittle worried about how my knees would cope. After about a hundred metres I couldn't deal with the slower pace and eased past the 40minute pacer to settle into my normal 10km pace with the knees feeling remarkably pain-free. I took up a position about 50m behind Ben - a guy I spent most of the Minimosmarathon running just behind and then met at the end. He's got almost the exact same pace as me so we just pounded out 3:50 kms for most of the course. In the last 1.5kms I picked up pace a litle bit (or Ben dropped) and I just passed him and held out with a strong sprint finish to cross the line a few seconds under 39 minutes.
Then I saw Luke give an all-out spectacular sprint finish to cross in just under 45 mins, nearly taking out the 45min pacer in the finish shute! Here's a shot of him sneaking up on the pacer earlier in the race:
Unfortunately I had to take off shortly after the end, but I thought it was a really well-organised race, with 5 tables of tasty snacks and fruit and all types of gatorade, soft drink, juice etc. I'll definitely be back next month!
Been icing the knees ever since, and went and bought some new shoes afterwards, so I'm hopefully back on track for the marathon.
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