Woodford to Glenbrook

Two weeks ago I was in a training run and my HR was reading above my effort. FSF said "you'll have a cold by Monday " and I just laughed. He was wrong - I had bronchitis by Monday! and was out of action completely for about 10 days. A couple of 5k runs (which left me coughing) kinda said I'd be ok for W2G but just to take it easy. So on Sunday morning, after picking up Brick and Gogirl we headed to the mountains. Thanks to Gnome being our chauffeur, we drove straight to the start at Glenbrook with about 30 mins to spare. Fortunately when I decided to join the toilet queue, I found my running buddy, Amy, just ahead of me and I didn't need to search for her amongst the heaps of CoolRunners and Striders who were there. I have to admit I was a bit scared of how the day would go but knew I could walk if needed. A quick kiss goodbye and I left Gnome with Emjay, Helmet, Nick and young Tim to go and have coffee while we raced.

We took the first few ks easy as advised and didn't worry about people going past us. From about 6k we caught up with some and started to make some little gains. Around 9k we were running near about 4 other girls and kept changing places over the next few ks. At about 15k this really negative fellow who'd been near us for a while, barged through the middle of us without warning and in my attempt to suggest he warn people of his passing I went flat on my face. I got up quickly with some new beaut grazes but also, a new determination to get pass him if only for safety reasons. From about here, Amy and I stopped using the water stations and just used what we had in our fuel belts. This enabled us to keep up the momentum and ignore the little aches that were starting. I have to admit for the last 5ks my back ribs were aching and I knew my lungs were being tested. We ended up having a really good run over the second half maintaining sub 6min k's and passed at least 20 runners to finish 2.41.52. (and beat that man!!).

Our time was so much better than I expected after being sick but I had a really scary reminder when I stopped at the end and realised I couldn't breathe and was wheezing so badly a first aid person came and took me to the tent. Fortunately sitting allowed my breath to return, so they patched up my grazes instead. Amy and I took our shoes off and cooled our feet on the wet grass and then laughed as we both discovered that after my fall, secretly we had both decided to beat that fellow home. A few minutes later the other 4 girls who'd been near us came through and delighted in telling us that they had beaten him home, too. Maybe we should all thank him for being so painful.

We then enjoyed a lovely lunch with some CR friends and celebrated with chocolate of course.

This was my first every trail race and my longest distance ever and I feel really pleased with how it went. I just wish my body wasn't so sore today and that Gnome would stop laughing at me :-)