Weight of The World: Sunday 21st May

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Sunday 21st May

Exercise: Great Ocean Road Half Marathon Well where do I start.....Woke up at 5am. Michelle and I got dressed and had some brekky before we headed out to run the 2.5km into town where the bus pick up was. A nice warm up too. There were plenty of buses waiting to transport people down to Kennett River (awful memories of GTR still makes me shudder!!)and we jumped on a nice warm bus straight away. The atmosphere in the bus was really upbeat and there was lots of laughter and chatter as we made our way along the road that we were going to have to run back along. Seemed to take quite a long time to get there....not a good thought before we'd even gotten off the bus!! We arrived in Kennett River with over an hour to wait for the start. Got our transponders and then headed over to the toilets which were in a camping ground on the other side of the road. As usual there was a huge queue for the ladies toilets, but we were told there was another toilet block at the other end of the camping ground so we hurried up there...no queues - yippee!! Didn't take long for word to spread though. The queue had grown dramatically by the time we emerged from the loos! It was beautiful watching the sunrise, although there was a faint pink glow to the clouds (that's not good in my books....red sky in the morning etc etc!!). Eventually we were given the signal to get organised for the start. Still lots of joviality in the crowd. There were probably about 500 people there so it wasn't a huge race by any means. Suddenly the countdown was on....5, 4, 3, 2, 1....the gun went off! First hill was fine, second hill not too bad either. The third hill killed me. Felt sick from then on (see further below for possible reasons). All I could do after that was try to keep going and not puke!! I did try to concentrate on the view, which was just breathtaking. Almost the whole way there was a fantastic rainbow spread from the horizon over to the hills. I drank some water, I had some gel at about 12km's, but I just couldn't shake this horrible feeling in my stomach. I had to walk a couple of the hills as I just didn't have enough energy to run up them. I ended up telling Michelle to run on without me. She really didn't want to do it but I forced her to as I could tell that she was really doing it easy and I hated the thought that I was holding her back. Very reluctantly she carried on without me. I did think at one stage that I might just quit, but that's just not in my nature so I did a run/walk shuffle. The weather was a pain in the arse. Just couldn't make up it's mind if it was going to rain or if it was going to be sunny so I was constantly taking off my jacket and then putting it back on again. Michelle had to do the same thing as she'd worn her Thumps and needed to keep them dry. Evenutally saw the finish line and tried to make it look good by running the last km without walking (haha!). The good news was that my calf was fine. No pain at all (thank goodness!!). Afterwards we went back to the cabin that we'd been staying at and got changed, packed up the car and headed back to the finish line in time to see Clarkey cross the line after running his first marathon. Now for a reflection of why I didn't do very well. 1. I drank too much alcohol on Saturday!! 2. I ate too much crap food on Friday night and Saturday!! 3. I did absolutely no exercise from Monday night onwards! 4. I ate very badly during the week! 5. I changed my normal eating plan on race morning! 6. Did I tell you that I drank too much alcohol?? 7. I did not do enough hill training! 8. I don't feel that I took this race seriously enough! Okay, I'm over it now. Have gotten past my little tantrum and am now concentrating on next week's 1/2 Marathon at Williamstown. This week I am going to eat well, hydrate lots, avoid alcohol and crap food, and get in my normal exercise plan! See you all at Williamstown!