C2S 2006

After meeting up with Bernie, Blue Dog and Superflake outside the baggage dropoff at the Water Board before they even opened up we all headed to the start line and were there shortly after 7am. With the race not kicking off until 9.30am that ensured a pretty good spot.

The time passed amazingly quickly. It was great to catch up again with so many fellow bloggers, CRs and Brissie runners as well as meet a few that had been on my 'list' including Blkbox. It was like a little party - there was lots of food passed around, goals discussed, plus the odd bit of sledging :-)

As for the race the hills hurt. And then they hurt some more. Due to the ITB injury I'd done stuff all hill work in six months, maybe three sessions, so I guess it was always going to be my weakness.

I'd set a goal of sub 66. I knew I wasn't up to bettering my previous two C2S times - 65:05 (2004) and 63:30 (2005). I was a bit panicky when I saw the big clock at the 7k mark and it read 35 mins flat and so reassessed the goal to a sub 70. I got to 10k in 48:xx (ha ha, that's usually where I'm at in marathons!) and thought sub 68 was a possibility.

From about 11k onwards I stuck to the left hand side knowing the cheersquad was coming up soon ... well, in 2ks time is sort of soon :-) It was around here that R2B ran by so I tried to keep up with him. We stuck together for a little while, which was great as he was absolutely flying down the hills. I really was moving a lot faster than I would have if I was on my own - thanks mate!

Finally there they were - JD, Jen, Rags and Sparkie - woohoo! Running up Campbell Pde I spotted CJ just in front and tried hard to catch her but she was finishing so strongly and just getting further and further away.

A glance at the clock in the finishing straight and I knew if I put the foot down that original sub 66 goal was in the bag. Yay - 65:48!!! How's that for a negative split - 35:00 and 30:48 :-)

The post run celebrations are all part of the fun of this event. It was great to hear about fantastic runs by so many people - Tuggeranong Don and his sub 60, Gronk, fellow Team J bloggers Kit and Bernie, Spud backing up from 12ft the day before. The list goes on. Aki's asthma attack mid race, and then stopping to help a woman who collapsed in front of her was the story of the day, especially considering she still ran 67:xx!

The Gronk/GoGirl/Tesso bus didn't quite eventuate this year, the Gronk was a little too fast for we girls. But we've already started our secret training for 2007 so he'd better watch out.