Bridge 2 Brisbane.... back in the running!

Well, all I can say is that I had a FANTASTIC morning this morning. I've never done B2B before, but have wanted to for the past two years and for various reasons (no training/jetlag) never taken part.

I headed to PM's house at 5am and we drove down to New Farm to catch the bus with the rest of the guys to the Gateway Bridge start. There was thousands of people (a record 20,000 in total I'm told) there. Scotty & I last Matt while we queued with hundreds others for a last minute toilet stop, and then headed down to our red marker start, which behind the Elites sent us off first.

The gun went off and Tess, Lizzle, Ciaran and a couple others flew ahead of me. Tesso had said something about running 4.45's, but if that was the pace she was doing I was just going to have to accept I was going to be much slower!! I absolutely LOVED running over the Gateway Bridge, barely noticed the gradient as I looked across the city and the bay, the most beautiful morning and before I knew it I was heading back down the otherside. Matt had caught me up by this point, and we ran down the bridge together saying hi to people we knew. I told Matt to carry on as I would be running too slow for him, but he kept with me, saying he was treating the run as his Sunday long run, not as a race. I was feeling good as we came off the bridge and had a nice rhythm going. At 5km I'd taken about 40seconds off my Jetty2Jetty time of just two weeks ago. Matt said something about 4.40 pace, and I was feeling relaxed and happy with this. As we moved towards the city, the river on one side, people cheering on the other I was feeling great. A slight ache in my lower back, but nothing that was getting worse, and I told Matt that at this pace I was going to be okay. I reached the 10km marker with a new PB equivalent and was soon kicking in to cover the last two k's.

I crossed the line and stopped my watch at 56.16. Very happy, as my goal was anything around 58mins, though the 11th K was a bit tough going, and I was really glad to have Matt there encouraging me along!! Equivalent of 4.41k/min and taking the bridge in to account I'm feeling quite good about running again!! :)