Sarah's Dasher Life

I never thought I'd run a marathon, and until I got the chance to run New York, I probably never would have. Now I'm addicted.

[dasherlife]

Gold Coast Half Marathon 21.1km

Another great holiday combined with a great run!

We headed up to the Gold Coast on the Friday night and finally made it to our hotel after flight delays, traffic delays, everything delayed. Being hungry on top of all of this makes for not a fun time at all. 

Saturday was amazing because we got some sunshine! 

The Dungog Dasher ladies met up at Elk Espresso (as chosen & booked by the lovely Jo) and we laughed and chatted about New York while meeting up with new and old friends.

Anthea was then able to drive Reece & I to the Exhibition Centre to pick up my race pack. We got some other bits and pieces along the way at the great stalls they had.

Saturday night we tried to find the best pasta place on the Gold Coast, but lo-and-behold the rest of the Marathoners had found it too! We headed to Vapiano's and it was delicious but the wait for food was horrendous.

Afterwards we headed to the supermarket to get some breakfast supplies as the next morning's wake up call was set to 4:15am. WAY TOO EARLY! 

Anthea, Alia, Patrick and I met in the lobby of the QT Hotel at around 5am, and walked to the bus. We had to wait for a couple of buses to pass before we could get on one. It's amazing in the Gold Coast; 5am in the morning is only a tiny bit chilly in a singlet top! Love it. In Melbourne you would have gotten frostbite!! 

We didn't have long to wait until the start of the race and by gosh there were a lot of people. It was a bigger race than I thought it was! 

The track is pretty flat, the only hills are the bridges. It's also an out and back course which means you see the race winners past you on the way back. The first time the winner of the half marathon passed me was when I was about 6-7km in and 45minutes down. He was a speed demon. These guys go so fast I can't even explain. 

After the 7km mark I was quite sick of the flat-ness; I'm usually in need of some kind of hill or change of track (winding track?) to keep me preoccupied. That doesn't happen with this course. 

As I was totally under trained I wasn't expecting anything great, but about 15km in I really thought I might be able to finish around the time of my PB of 2:22. Unfortunately when you stop to walk, it's all over. So from 15km was when I was probably walking more than running and the sun had come up so it was getting really warm.

I managed to finish in 2:34 which I'm happy with for having only run twice in the month prior to the race.

The Dasher Ladies had some drinks in the Stingray Bar that afternoon (after I had a luxurious 2.5hr massage and scrub! mmmm). Espresso Martinis were definitely in order. 

What a great weekend. I'm sad that I won't be able to do it again next year with everyone; most of the girls are thinking of doing the full marathon next year. Unfortunately I'll be living in GERMANY! 

[dasherlife]

Great Ocean Road Half Marathon 23km

Wow so we had a lovely time in Lorne Friday night/Saturday, then SUNDAY was d-day! 

My alarm went off at 5:15 to get ready, and we left just after 6am after packing up our hotel room & trying to get through Lorne before the cut off. The drive down to Kennett River was quite lovely in the dark with all the lights! 

Reece dropped me at the drop off point and kept driving through to Apollo Bay. I met Anthea pretty quickly, and she then found Richard.

Then it was 8am already and time to start! The first couple of k's were actually the hardest hills which is kind of nice to get it all over and done with, but kind of not at the same time because you want to ease into your run! 

I got through the first 5km ok, then that's when I really had to push to keep going up those hills. I got through my Starburst babies, had some gatorade and water along the way, even a jelly bean from a fellow runner :) 

I messaged Reece at around the 12km mark saying 'half way there!" but once I hit the 17km mark I was done for. I started to walk more than I ran and no more hills and a flat course meant boring for me. I was really over it by this time, and this was also because we'd just hit Apollo Bay and I wanted it to be over! 

I was aiming to do this race in just under 3 hours because of my under-trained state, the ridiculous hills and also the extra 2km tacked on to the end. My last half marathon I did at Run Melbourne and came in at 2:22 so 3hrs was a good estimate, and I just got in with 2:53! Reece, along with Mum & Dad were at the finish line.

Here's my Garmin link - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/501760825

Even though the hills are ridiculous I definitely want to do this again next year and now that I know the course and the amount of training that I should have done, I reckon it will be awesome. It's also so nice staying down the coast, it's so quiet and peaceful. I just wish I was a millionaire and could live there :)

[dasherlife]

Mother's Day 10km

I was planning on doing about 14km, but I ended up getting myself out of bed at like 2pm today. Ridiculous, I know. Reece went to a gig last night in Melbourne town, and when he left I sat on the computer and just didn't get off until about 1am. Then he got home at about 2 so we chatted about the night. So I think sleeping til 2pm is good, it makes up my weekend 12hr sleep record! 

So yes, the start of the 14km didn't happen until like 4:30. We were having dinner at Mum & Dad's and it's about 10km to their place, so I thought I'd do two laps of my ring road loop then keep going and that would equal around 14km. I was feeling so heavy though from the bolognese I'd eaten about an hour before, that I thought screw the loop, I'll just keep going. So that amounted to about 10km ish - done in about 1:10. Which isn't too bad for me but there was a lot of walking in between! AND I feel like I haven't been having enough water lately so that's my goal for this week to help me with the Great Ocean Rd half.

Garmin update: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/497287183

It's a jam packed week this week - I've got 2 dinners, I'm running with Laura and I want to fit another short run in there too which is going to be hard - I might try that on my work-from-home day. Then on Friday it's off to Lorne! Hooray! 

Here's some photos from my run going into sunset - beautiful! 

[dasherlife]

So I started this blog because I post a lot of running stuff that people most likely get sick of... so here's post #1. VOSS water bottles are GLASS so they're good to re-fill and not get all that bad plasticy bad stuff. They're also amazing to put whatever fruit/vegies in your water to flavour it! Here's my concoction - blueberries, lime, cucumber and orange. Not so sure I'll do the cucumber again but the rest, sure. 

It's long run day tomorrow, I want to put away about 15km. It's the Great Ocean Road half next weekend and my training hasn't really gone to plan. I got sick mid April and was out for about 2 weeks, so I'm not expecting great things. It's my first major race for the year and some friends from the New York Marathon are coming along (interstate Australia) so it will be great to catch up!