Wangaratta Half Marathon

To finish off my 3 week long 50th birthday celebrations, and to prove to myself how marathon unfit I am, I took a leisurely drive to Wangaratta last weekend to run the half marathon down there as a training run. It was the inaugural Wangaratta half/full marathon and I was keen to do it for my own training purposes (ie, to really kickstart things in preparation for the Canberra marathon) but also to support it as a new event. The race organisers are Sharon and Justin Sholz of AUS ultra runner fame and who I have had a fair bit to do with at consecutive Coast to Kosci runs and otherwise over the last couple of years. They did an excellent job of putting on a good old fashioned, runner focussed event(s) - there was the full and half marathon, plus fun runs of various distances (10km, 5km, 2km). The half/full marathon course itself was interesting to say the least. It was mostly run on tree lined bike paths in and around the suburbs of Wangaratta. However, it had a couple of unique features - ie, lots of sharp 90deg and/or hairpin turns, and 3 crossings of suspension bridges. Both made running slower but in my case I think the impact was negligible. I was going to be slow anyway :) The suspension bridges in particular though provided a weird running sensation in that with runners all around you you never knew whether when you put your foot down the bridge was going to come up to meet your foot or if you were going to sink down on one side for your foot to eventually make contact with the bridge. Quite disconcerting. Anyway .... I ended up having a lovely run, finishing in a slow ~1.43, and achieving what I set out to achieve - ie, kicking myself up the backside with training.

This week back at work has been predictably full on following two weeks away but I've felt refreshed and motivated and so it's all been good. Surprisingly, I've also managed a couple of decent post Wangaratta training sessions, and so I'd have to say that work and training have both had a lift since I turned 50yrs :)