As I walked up my driveway it was spitting.
By the time I hunkered under the awning at the pub on the corner to wait for Kate to give me a lift, it was raining pretty heavily.
Arriving at Centennial Park 15 minutes later for the Sri Chinmoy 14km race, it was absolutely bucketing down!
Everyone huddled under the shelter at the registration area, morosely staring at the rain, but miraculously as we forced ourselves out to mass for the start of the race, the rain stopped! The course wasn’t too badly waterlogged and by the end of the race the sun was out and it was too hot if anything.
Anyway enough about the weather. It was a small field which split up pretty quickly, a fairly flat 2 lap course with only a couple of undulations and a great surface of mainly grass and dirt tracks. I really enjoyed the course, it felt like real cross country running!
I started at the back of the pack and just worked my way through for the first minute or so (as I said it wasn’t a big crowd) until I was a few metres behind Eagle and I realised that I was at about my pace. Went over the first km in 4:05 and the 2nd in 4:10 and I didn’t feel like I had much more in me. I caught up with Eagle shortly and we ran alongside each other for a while although I didn’t have breath to chat, then I felt like pulling away slightly so off I went. That was pretty much it, my pace slowed a little again to about 4:20s and I couldn’t seem to make my legs go any faster, but I guess that’s what happens when you run 35kms the day before!
By that stage all the faster guys had taken off and there was nobody in front that I could even see, so it was hard to judge pace and keep motivated. I was really hoping to get under 60mins but I struggled over the halfway mark in 29:30 and was unsure of being able to hold it until the end.
I did seem to be slowing down over the next few kms and with about 4km to go I wasn’t sure that I could do it as it required keeping up at least a 4:15 pace which I didn’t know if I had in me. Thankfully at that very time I heard footsteps behind me and a slightly faster guy caught and passed me. I sped up and stuck to his shoulder, then gritted my teeth and thought “I am going to keep up with this guy to the end and we will break 60 minutes”.
With about 200m to go I thought we would do it if we hurried so I looked over and exchanged our first words “Let’s do it, if we sprint we’ll make it in under an hour!” With that off we went and crossed the line together in 59:52, he was an Irish traveller by the name of Brian who is clearly much faster usually but has been travelling and not running for months. So it was a very satisfying race in the end – I love a sprint finish!
Feasted on the incredible pancakes with banana, nutella and maple syrup (what a pig!) and caught up with Eagle and Horrie to exchange some thoughts about Canberra. Both those guys are looking at 3:10 for the marathon (with Horrie pushing on for the 50km) so I’ll try to meet up with them and stick with them for the race.
Dad’s birthday today – happy birthday Dad!!! The family are coming over and Sarah’s making Korean bibimbap for us all tonight, yummy.
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