A sack full of positives

I said the other day that the Central Coast half was going to be fun - it turned out to much more than that. As the title said, it was full of positives such as...

• This is the real biggie. Those of you who have battled through the last few months of our blog will know that tiger angel has not been in the best health. It's not been anything serious, just a litany of this and that, combined with a mysterious nausea that joins in all the races early on and paces her to the finish (constantly attempting to trip her up on the way). It's not just the average 'gone-out-too-hard' problem, but we don't really know what it is. Anyhow, the big news is that, after two hours of hard running, she suddenly realised that she wasn't feeling crook! Tired, yes, but not crook. Let's hope that little episode has been put to bed for once and for all. Did it have anything to do with her being put under lock and key and not allowed to exercise last week? Very possibly, but whatever the cause, it's nice to have her back in one piece :-)
• At the beginning of this year, TA's goal was to be able to do a 10k race without worrying about it for weeks beforehand. In other words, 10k was something you just did (to the best of your ability), not something that consumed you. When we arrived home this afternoon, she said "Do you know what? We just did a half marathon! No special preparation, no fussing". That's a goal achieved way beyond expectations.
• The time, whilst 4 minutes outside our pb, was done on the back of about 6 weeks of very little effective training and yet was run in a very controlled, even manner with about 2 drops of petrol left in the tank at the end. The body may not have been in perfect tune, but the mind was in firm control :-)
• As for me, at the end of the run today I felt like I could have turned around and done it all again. Now I know that so many marathon race reports say "at the half way point, I felt fine" and then go on to say "at the 32k mark, I started to collapse", but at least I know that I can say the first (and I thoroughly expect in time to say the second too :-)
• In the last 3 or 4 km, I had cause to twice do a 400m sprint, and both times it felt just the same as intervals on the track and not at all like I'd just run 18km.
  

On top of all that, we got to spend some good time with lots of the CR crew. Jen_runs and Mr GoGirl did sterling service in the cheer squad (as did Plu, but he was also running :-). I got to meet Aim High, Kaz (super brave run for a new pb!) and MinersRun (finally) for the first time. Here's a picture of some of us before lunch.

From Left to Right, Gronk, Tiger Angel, Go Girl, BennyR, sfGnome, half of Jen_Runs, MinersRun, with Royworlds in the Front.

sfG