Friday 15 October 2010

Noosa Half Marathon 23rd May

On Friday Anna Maria had flown in but going Montreal to Vancouver to Sydney to Brisbane had missed a connecting flight in Sydney (hardly surprising i've never found Sydney a good place to fly into and would always prefer to drive there).
So instead of picking her up around lunchtime picked her up around 3 by which time the weather had deteriorated, was looking like we'd have a wet weekend in Noosa.
Saturday the weather had cleared and we had a good drive north stopping in to see Bill and Jane Thompson on the way (Anna Maria had seen me eat Custard Apples on skype but had never had one herself, a new treat).
Time to pick up our race packs and then find our accommodation in Noosaville, went for a walk that evening trying to work out how far we'd need to walk to the start the next morning, but with my debatable sense of direction never found it in the dark !!.
Come race morning it was coolish and clear, pretty ideal for that sort of shortish event, pretty much my goal being to do under 90 minutes not having done that in my two last year (first time in over 20 years not a streak i was happy to break).
With around 1,200 runners was finding it hard to get a comfortable pace with room but was content to find gaps when possible and was through the first half in a consistent time, know that i could keep that up pretty easily for the second lap.
Nice course but by now i just wanted to get it finished, the odd familiar face but for the most part half marathoners are a different breed and i don't do that many nowadays so just kept on running hard to see the clock just tick over 88 minutes with a better chip time of 1:27:55 and ultimately 106th place, not quite what i used to be able to do but good enough i knew at least i still had some speed.
Anna Maria set out with a goal of sub 1:50 and her chip time of 1:49:59 showed she knew exactly what she was doing !!!.

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