Sunday May 22nd 2005: I did a half marathon!
Well I did a half marathon! It's been a long road to achieve the goal that I set myself a couple of years ago. I've been running on and off for about 4 years and I've finally been able to train consistently for about 6 months and make it to the start line without becoming injured.I was less nervous about the race than I thought I would be. I was more nervous about the Mother's Day Classic we'd done a few weeks before and any remaining nerves were put to rest after doing a quick warm up and realising that yes my legs do work and I can run... and then the lovely Lucky Legs to the rescue. We'd met before at a previous race and she recognised me. I lined up for the start with her whilst Mr Lulu went to be nearer the front for a good start. Lucky Legs was great, offering me sound words of advice and keeping my nerves under control.. then we were off. I said 'good luck' to LL and headed off.
I really enjoyed the race, which was a great surprise to me.. hey maybe this running thing is fun after all! I took it pretty steadily at the start, or so I thought but the first 5km split was still my fastest. After the first 10km I was feeling pretty good and grabbed a water at about 11km and headed off for the second lap. At about the 16km mark I realised that I was in fact going to finish a half marathon and I felt a real sense of 'empowerment' ( I hate that word normally, much overused by "management", but it seems appropriate here). I was going to make it!
For the last 5km I knew I was slowing down but kept pushing away.. that second time up Argyle Street was tough but I knew it was flat and downhill from there and the CR cheersquad were there to give me a cheer. Down the hill and onto the final straight. That last km seemed a lot longer than it did the first two times along Hickson Road. A few CRs shouted encouragement and I kept plodding along and there was the finish.. I even managed a minor sprint for the finish which nearly ended in tears when the 2 runners in front of me stopped short of the finish line and I ran into the back of them. Then it was over and there was Mr Lulu just after the finish chute "oh my god I did it" were my words to him and then gave him a big sweaty hug and shed a few tears! I'm very glad the lovely volunteers were there to take off the timing chip as I'm not sure I could have bent down to do it!
I felt tired but not totally stuffed and although my time of 2 hrs 14 mins is not going to win me any prizes I still felt the greatest sense of achievement than from anything I've done in a long time. Probably because I'm not a natural athlete ( to put it mildly!) and I put in 18 weeks of consistent training which was quite hard work at times, but I stuck with it.
The bad news was that my poor husband did not have such a great day - between 1 and 2km his calf muscle tore and that was the end of his race. I did wonder why I didn't see him at all on the course but he considerately kept himself out of view so that I didn't worry about him. So it was home for some ice on his leg and a warm bath for me followed by a nice lunch at one of our favourite restaurants in Bondi ( bondi social) with its fantastic view over beautiful Bondi Beach.. what a way to celebrate!
posted by Lulu @ 5:13 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Lulu - It was lovely to meet you and LL before the start of the race. You both looked so confident that I didn't spot any nerves at all! Lovely to catch up with you and Mr.Lulu after the race as well. I hope to meet up with you again some time.
Lovely to see you out yourself as a blogger. Great race report - you should be proud. Hope Mr. Lulu is doing a bit better now - I'll have to read some of your other posts now to find out how he's going.
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