My 2nd official race for the year, and another spectacular day for running. All of my hard training and near perfect running conditions equated to a great result. Unfortunately I narrowly missed out on breaking the 100 minute barrier, ending up with an official time of 1:40:31
It was a really early start to the morning, as the Campbelltown Joggers bus left the club at 5 am sharp, and the race started at 6:45.
This year I left my entry until the last minute, which meant that I started in the 4th group (green). The green group started 25 minutes behind the red group, so there was a lot of standing around. The race organisers decided to stagger the groups, with a 5-10 minute gap between groups. There has been a lot of road works and construction in and around the city, so the staggered start made sense. The staggered start actually assisted me, as I found myself right in front of the green group and less congested road ahead.
I was really nervous about this race, and was not sure how my body was going to respond. Over the last couple weeks, my right quad has been feeling like lead. During all of my training sessions, it has taken about 2km before the stiffness and heaviness ease. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get into my groove from the start gun and managed to keep the pace very consistent throughout the race, keeping an average between 4:20 and 4:40 a kilometer. I was really happy, as the route is not exactly flat. My Garmin reported an elevation gain of 600 meters, where there are only 3 flat sections.
Cunningham 