Canberra Marathon

Well, that's the second of the eight marathons down!

I ran the Canberra Marathon yesterday (13 April) in 3:43:30. I had a very relaxed and enjoyable run (HR <150 for the first 25km), primarily because mentally I had told myself just to treat this as another training run. I didn't set myself any real goals - although I wanted to finish somewhere between 3 1/2 and 4 hours. If I had run faster than 3 1/2 hours then I think I would have pushed too hard with six more marathons to come, and if it had been slower than 4 hours then something would have gone wrong!

The conditions on the course yesterday suited me just fine. We had some showers and light rain for the first hour or so, but we finished in bright sunshine. So the temperatures (unlike in Hobart in January) were nice and cool, but they weren't cold. I found the running surface a little skiddy in places, probably because Canberra hasn't been receiving a lot of rain recently so there was a touch of surface grime on the roads.

It's a very professionally run event and the volunteers were fantastic. It was particularly great to see so many family and friends out supporting the runners on the course - especially when the weather wasn't nearly as friendly. I always make an effort to high five any of the kids that hold out the their hands!

I also really enjoyed catching up with two of the girls from the Gunn Runners group in Melbourne. Sharyn Fitzgerald and Alex Gibson flew to Canberra on the Saturday morning, we had lunch together and both of the gals ran really well yesterday. Sharyn was particularly pleased to have smashed her marathon PB by about 10 minutes running under the magical 4 hour mark for the first time. She gave me a great big hug at the end and remarked "I'm a real marathoner now".

I'll take the running pretty easy for the next week or so with probably three easy runs Tue, Wed and Thur, and then a very relaxed 20km shake out run on the Saturday. Then it'll be back to the 100km routine (hopefully) next week.

Next marathon is in Bunbury, Western Australia in about a month's time.