#gcam14

Another great holiday combined with a great run!

We headed up to the Gold Coast on the Friday night and finally made it to our hotel after flight delays, traffic delays, everything delayed. Being hungry on top of all of this makes for not a fun time at all. 

Saturday was amazing because we got some sunshine! 

The Dungog Dasher ladies met up at Elk Espresso (as chosen & booked by the lovely Jo) and we laughed and chatted about New York while meeting up with new and old friends.

Anthea was then able to drive Reece & I to the Exhibition Centre to pick up my race pack. We got some other bits and pieces along the way at the great stalls they had.

Saturday night we tried to find the best pasta place on the Gold Coast, but lo-and-behold the rest of the Marathoners had found it too! We headed to Vapiano's and it was delicious but the wait for food was horrendous.

Afterwards we headed to the supermarket to get some breakfast supplies as the next morning's wake up call was set to 4:15am. WAY TOO EARLY! 

Anthea, Alia, Patrick and I met in the lobby of the QT Hotel at around 5am, and walked to the bus. We had to wait for a couple of buses to pass before we could get on one. It's amazing in the Gold Coast; 5am in the morning is only a tiny bit chilly in a singlet top! Love it. In Melbourne you would have gotten frostbite!! 

We didn't have long to wait until the start of the race and by gosh there were a lot of people. It was a bigger race than I thought it was! 

The track is pretty flat, the only hills are the bridges. It's also an out and back course which means you see the race winners past you on the way back. The first time the winner of the half marathon passed me was when I was about 6-7km in and 45minutes down. He was a speed demon. These guys go so fast I can't even explain. 

After the 7km mark I was quite sick of the flat-ness; I'm usually in need of some kind of hill or change of track (winding track?) to keep me preoccupied. That doesn't happen with this course. 

As I was totally under trained I wasn't expecting anything great, but about 15km in I really thought I might be able to finish around the time of my PB of 2:22. Unfortunately when you stop to walk, it's all over. So from 15km was when I was probably walking more than running and the sun had come up so it was getting really warm.

I managed to finish in 2:34 which I'm happy with for having only run twice in the month prior to the race.

The Dasher Ladies had some drinks in the Stingray Bar that afternoon (after I had a luxurious 2.5hr massage and scrub! mmmm). Espresso Martinis were definitely in order.