Great Ocean Road Marathon 2010

After a nice pasta dinner in Apollo Bay my mate Wheaty and I headed to our tents at the local caravan park, set our alarms for 5:00 am and hit the sack for a good nights sleep.

I woke up at about 4:45 and could hear Wheaty squirming around in his tent, so I thought what the hell, lets get this show on the road. We had our breakfast under the stars, packed our gear and headed in to town to catch the bus to Lorne.

Our wonderful bus driver put Happy Gilmour on the TV, a perfect choice!

After getting to Lorne we milled around with the other 580 runners until the race finally got under way at 8:00am. Wheaty and I started together but about 50 metres down the road I quickly got carried away with the crowd and started my usual early race dodge and weave act.

I Glided throught he first 10km in 47 minutes feeling fantastic. The first real hill started at the 7km mark and it did not pose any problems, I was joking with runners and spectators as I skirted up and then flew down the other side.

When I hit the halfway mark in Kennett River at about 1:45, or thereabouts I was feeling awesome and starting to fantasise about a sub 3:30 marathon. Fantasies that were soon to be snuffed out as quickly as they had arisen.

Straight after Kennett River the road begins to rise and rise and rise. After a short respite at the top of this peak there is another, shorter but steeper peak to overcome. As I ran down the other side towards the 30km mark I noticed that I no longer had any downhill spring in my legs.

At about 32km Wheaty finally caught up with me. We compared notes about dead quads and cramping hamstrings and then pushed each other with swearing and will power to cross the 42.2 km timer mat in 3:48.

Of course we stopped as soon as we had hit the mat. A fellow runner, who had also stopped, looked across and with a half smile / half grimace said, "and now some salt for the wounds". She was not wrong! We had another 2.8 km to reach the race finish line.

Motivation to run that final leg was very tough to find. After quite a few false starts we finally started to run with about 200m to go to the finish line. Incredibly, we actually started to pick up the pace as we ran through the cheering crowd to finish our first Ultramarathon in 4:13.

For the next marathon I will need to remember to hold back a little early on in the race and if there are hills, treat them with some respect because they will get you. Hmmm, stacks more hill training in future, that'll help to sort things out!

The next race is the Run Melbourne half marathon in July. Sub 90 is the target, bring it on!