Bob Goes to Australia: Sydney Half Marathon

Sydney Half Marathon

September 18th, 2011

Time: 1:25:20

Place: 95th / 8,357

The best race I have ever been in.

Ok so the half marathon was scheduled to start at 6:20am sunday morning and it recommended you got there an hour early so at 5:20am. This being a very early start and having the train ride from wollongong to Sydney being just over an hour and a half we decided to go up to Sydney on saturday afternoon and stay the night in a hostel on Sydney Harbor. The hostel was really really nice, the best hostel ive been in yet. It was basically a hotel room but with 2 bunk beds instead of 2 queen beds. During the day on saturday we went to to marathon expo and picked up our number and pins we needed for the race. Then we walked back towards the hostel to find a nice place to have a pasta dinner and then went to bed early. Steve, Steve, and myself were in one room with another random guy who did not leave his bed the entire time we were there and then Christa was in another room with two strangers. We set our alarms for 4:45am which came quickly. We got up, showered and walked over the harbor bridge (about 1.5 miles) to the starting line. We were walking over the bridge right at sunrise which was really cool. At the starting line we got in our singlets and I got in line to use the bathroom which took forever. Just as we were stepping out if the bathroom the announcer started the countdown from 10 seconds until the start of the race. This was still when there was hundreds of people walking around and still in line for the bathroom. We wernt even sure where the starting line was so we sprinted over towards where we thought it was and ended up being stuck in a line of people backed up way behind the starting line. It ended up taking three and a half minutes to get to the starting line and start the race. Once it started I wanted to run but I couldnt because there was a million people in front of me. I got impatient very fast because I wanted to run a good time and began running between people to pass everyone for the first 2 miles. Eventually I got in front of the huge pack and could settle into the pace I wanted to run. This was the longest race I have ever been in so I was nervous and didnt want to start out too fast. The first half of the race (7 miles) was fine but after the halfway point I quickly began to feel tired but I ended up keeping my pace until about the last mile when I feel like I slowed down a little. I ended up crossing the line in 95th place with a time of 1:25:20 which I am really happy about considering I wasnt training very hard before the race and it was a slow start. It was really cool to run across the Harbour Bridge during the race and to run past the Opera House a few times. The weather was pretty hot too, around 75 degrees probably. At the end we collected all the free stuff we could such as hats, visors, bags, water bottles, blankets, stopwatches, and lots of food. After everyone finished and recovered enough to move again we jogged off to the train station to make it back to Wollongong in order to catch the last few games of intercollege soccer which is a tournament between all the different housing locations at the University of Wollongong.