SMH Half and other miracles

It's very late and I should be asleep (as is the sore sfgnome) but today was amazing. In brief, my first Half marathon was awesome, my swannies won and at church tonight Micro TA was touched by God in a real way. How good can a day get :-) (this is the only brief part - apologies now).

Today was our first Half marathon. sfGnome was really keen to do it although my training is geared towards 10k's at the moment. The deal was to treat it as a training run. We met up with fellow runclubbers (runners and cheerers) near the start and our coach Tim (Freespiritfitness) joined us for some last minute encouragement and to tell us where he'd be on the course.

We headed towards the start and met up with fellow CR's - Gronk, Omni, Horrie, Belinda and Lil'elf. Got off at a nice steady pace and felt strong up Hunter St, saw Tim near Art gallery Rd and he reminded me to use the downhills. Went past the 5k mark & was happy to be under split time.

Spotted Andy and Daz with Tim on the way back out and got a 'beautiful form' in return for a wave. Flew down Hunter St using the tips Tim had given me in a session (felt like we passed 100's runners)and soon came round to be greeted by the award winning cheer squads for Cool Runners and Run Clubbers. You guys ROCKED!! Made the 10k point about 55 and then 11k just under 60 - quite shocked.

An advantage of being towards the back of this race was that we got to see the elites. As we came down Hickson Rd, Brett Cartwright lapped us and went in to win. We were past the finish gate before Scott Westacott and Mona's came in but it was so exciting to be there and hear it all. Now for our second lap.

Past the awesome cheersquad again and Hunter St was tougher this time. Missed Tim up on the corner and headed into the Domain. Saw fellow runclubber Angela up ahead and yelled we were coming. At the 15k we were still sub our splits so it was beginning to look like Tim was right about sub 120. Angela was desperate for a sub 120 in her 3rd attempt so she hooked on with us hoping to be able to bring it home. We were all feeling a bit sore in spots but decided between the 3 of us we made up one set of good legs!!

Turned into Macquarie St to hear 'OK Sue, it's a time trial from hear to home - just start picking people off'. Yep Tim was back offering encouragement although when I spoke to him he told me I wasn't working hard enough if I could talk. Some training run!! I appreciated it though because I guess it made me forget about the tired body and refocus. Hit Hunter St and started to really work the downhill again. Tim called out something about 'that's good, just like in training, keep the cadence up' and this woman near me started making comments about that girl and her coach so I headed to the other side of the crowd away from Tim and when we got down the bottom I asked him to go away. I didn't want anyone getting their knickers in a knot over it.

Another great cheer from the squad and it was back up Argle Cut- really tough here and my back was uncomfortable on this hill so sfGnome placed his hand on it and that helped. We'd lost Angela and was hoping she wasn't too far behind.Down in to Hickson and sfGnome suggested a sub 5min final K. No worries and we crossed hand in hand for 117 something our time. We had done it and Tim was right :-).

8 runclubbers ran - Rob, Dilly & Munch doing 91's with Julia, Kelly, Us and Angela doing 113-118. 26miles who helps out at run club did low 80's- absolutely awesome. We were all estactic and grateful to Tim for all his encouragement and we really enjoy the community that has grown from runclub. We then topped off the day catching up with many CR's for drinks.

I wonder what I could do if I actually trained towards one of these ?? TA