Noosa 2:10

Well, at least I took five minutes off my gold coast time ?!?! I've come to the conclusion that it's just going to take me some time to get better at this. All things considered and having done three half marathons in three months, I'm feeling quite good about today's effort. It'd have been nice to crack 2 hours, but at the same time I kept thinking about what the lovely LuckyLegs and others have said about just enjoying the race - which is exactly what I did :)

Drove with Sam down to Noosa on saturday afternoon and checked into our youth hostel - which was quite literally next to the start line. We went and had dinner and watched the sun set on the beach. Had dinner at the SLSC and on the way back we overheard the big, burly bouncers outside discussing their crocheting and knitting. I'm serious *grins* I love it when people refuse to bend to stereotypes ;) May his craft project be very successful ;)

Played some pool (badly on my part) chatted to a backpacker and then hit the hay. Had another late-to-the-startline dream and woke up thinking we'd overslept. Which we hadn't of course, but race nerves get me every time! Headed down to the start line and caught up with everyone, then before we knew it, we were off.

I started with the 2 hour pacer, but pretty quickly decided just to run my own race. The purple balloons disappeared off into the distance, I missed my optimistic sub 2 splits right from the second km onwards *L* and so I just concentrated on getting comfortable. It took me the first 5km to get into a rhythym and warm up (my heels and calves were a bit tight). I started running with a couple of other women who were going at exactly my pace which really helped.

The weather was absolutely beautiful and the run itself is very pretty, with lots of scenery and stuff to look at. There were a couple of bridges to go over in each 10km loop, but surprisingly, they didn't bother me at all. As time went on, I kept expecting to have to walk like I did at the Gold Coast, but in the end, I hardly even stopped for water (perhaps twice) and instead, I drank my fuel belt bottles which were much easier to manage while running. I also ate half a power bar at about 10km, which I think made a huge difference. Previously, I've never eaten before or during a long run because I've been thinking about the extra calories or whatever, but having done it this time round, I'm sold - I'll have to check those gels out next time, because the power bar was hard to eat and swallow on the run.

Got to about 15km and thought to myself, any minute now I'm going to crash and burn like I have previously... but I kept on feeling fine. My legs were getting tired of course, but I could keep going. Even better, the orange pacers appeared next to us (I think they'd been going a little too fast and slowed down) so we were bang on target - At which point I just vowed to hang on, so I'd beat my GC time. Before I knew it, we were coming round the last km and into the home strait, and I found I could even sprint, so off I went - coming in at 2.10 with the pacer.

So even though I was nowhere near 2 hours, I still finished feeling really good - tired, but good. I just can't get over how much better I felt than the GC and even the B2B 12km. That's probably why I don't feel as disappointed as I did after the GC - I know that even though I didn't run faster, I ran better.

My next goal is the upcoming West End 25km - this time just to complete it ;)