Gold Coast Marathon

I've happily reached the halfway point for my Eight in 08. Woohoo.

I ran the Gold Coast Marathon last weekend (6 July 2008). I had had to readjust my race goal in the week leading up to the race when I developed a bit of a cold. While it was just a bit of congestion and a headache, over the length of the marathon I wasn't sure what full impact it may have.

So I headed out even more conservatively than I would normally and covered the first 5km in a pretty slow time. At about the 2km mark I passed an old friend from Melbourne - Chris H. who was running his first marathon. He was running comfortably and was sounding nice and confident. He planned to run just behind the 3.45 pace group and would be happy finishing just under 4 hours. We chatted for a few minutes, but I lost him coming out of a drink station.

The weather was reasonably cool - at least compared with the previous two GCMs that I had run. The cloud cover and rain the previous days meant that it also seemed quite humid. In the latter part of the course this seemed to become more apparent.

The 10km mark came and went, and soon after the 12km mark I saw the leaders returning. At that stage (probably about 17km for them) there were two Africans in the lead with a Japanese runner in third position. It's always quite exciting on out and back courses to be able to see the leading groups - gee they were clipping along.

The southern turnaround point was a good mental milestone to reach and then it was a retrace of steps back toward the start/finish area. My left hip began to tighten up at its customary distance around 18km, but a momentary slowdown for a couple of minutes shook that out. I can't recall my timesplit crossing the halfway point, but it was a little slower than it had been in Canberra or Busselton.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that my watch battery ran out just prior to the start, so I couldn't record the same level of detail for this run as previously.

Back past the start/finish area and I could see a lot of the half marathoners at around their 2 hour point heading down the finishing chute. We marathoners headed north for the shorter of the out and back loops. For some reason, the loop out always seems to take a long time!

Just after the northern turnaround point, I enjoyed half a banana kindly prepared by a roadside stall and then settled into the business end of the run. Ml legs felt heavy and tired, and by the 38 km mark my right hamstring was cramping. A couple of short walking/stretching breaks followed, and by the time I was ran down the finishing chute, things were good again.

I ran over the line in 3:51 something with a net time of 3:50 on the dot. I am quite happy with the time considering the immediate lead up to this race.

The plan now is to put in some faster paced and more intense training over the next few weeks leading up to Alice Springs. I plan to run Alice nice and easily 3:40 - 3:50, but push harder in Adelaide two weeks later (if I can).