Melbourne Marathon Completed!!

Goal achieved. Run the whole 10kms without stopping.

While at times, walking may well have been faster than my running, I still kept going.

Despite the gloomy start to the day, the weather conditions were pretty much perfect for a long run. Cool, not raining, not too sunny and a light breeze. Unfortunately for all the other competitors in the other races they would have copped a down pour at some stage, but lucky for me I'd already crossed the finished line and had gone inside the MCG to pick up my bag.

The first couple of kilometers went well - A little frustrating that so many of the competitors decided after only a few hundred meters that running was just too hard and decided to walk.... with their friends.... in a long line.... and block the path of all other people behind them... who were running... which was the point. ANYWAY!! After zig zagging around these people, I was feeling good, just easing myself into it knowing I still had a long way to go. I'd miss-timed my pace slightly and was travelling at 7min 30 secs per km, instead of 7min p/km.

The 3- 6km part went well, slight uphill but mostly flat. I caught up the time I'd lost in the first part of the race and upped my pace to around 6min 40 per km. Still slowish, but I was happy with this pace - comfortable, legs not too sore and good steady controlled breathing.

I'd started to fall into a good stride (I call it my robot legs), where I feel like my legs are on rotating hinges and whip around in circles like clockwork with limited effort. Unfortunately due to more people slowing down / walking and so many people on the course, it was difficult to maintain my stride as I couldn't go in a straight line the whole time. However, this was the part of the race I felt the most comfortable in.

It was around the 7km mark that I started to struggle. I could feel my hips really stiffening up. I tried to counteract it by speeding up, but I wasn't able to maintain the speed. I was spurred on knowing I only had 3kms left. With a drink station at the 7.5km mark I decided to try and get ahead of the people getting in my way - I knew they would stop for a drink, so I just kept running straight through the drink stop which worked a treat. From this point on, those bloody walkers were behind me and fortunately I found myself at the top of a hill which I took full advantage of and tried to pick up full speed to get to the bottom of.

After this, there was a lot of uphill. A lot. Ugh.

Everything hurt and everything was stiff. It took all the strength I had just to keep running. "Just keep going" was my mantra - I kept repeating it over and over in my head. I think in my exhaustion I even said it out loud at one point. Then all I could see was a huge long straight that just seemed to go on and on and on forever - Hundreds of runners in front of me - wishing I was one of the ones further up in the distance I could do nothing except keep running. Finally I reached the turnpike at the end, and had to run this forever stretch again, only the opposite way. It was somewhat comforting that though all those people were ahead of me, there were plenty more behind me too.

After that I heard one of the volunteers yell out, "you only have 300 meters left". That was music to my ears. Despite seeing another uphill stint ahead, faintly in the distance I could see the giant blow up finish arch way. I have no idea where it came from but somewhere deep within my robotic legs kicked in. All of a sudden I could feel myself propelling forward toward the finish line. I could hear people cheering - "Go go go".... so I did. And then all of a sudden I was there. Finished.

And then after giving it absolutley everything I had, all I could do to keep myself from vomiting in front of all those spectators was to stagger the 100 meters to the drink table to replenish my energy. And I did, and I felt so much better.

I'd done it!

Total time 1 hour, 8 minutes and 41 seconds!