Bridge 2 Brisbane

My second attempt at the B2B this morning started with my alarm going off at 4.15am. I had told Mr Chelle I was getting up at 5.30am so he was muttering some stuff about 'stupid hour of the night' as I struggled to get myself out of bed and in to the cold and dark. Driving through the Valley at 5am is a scary thing to do by yourself, especially when you have to stop at a red light outside The Beat as everyone is pouring out! Anyway, I found a park on the nearest side street to the bowls club, decided that I only needed to donate a jumper and not the shirt as well headed off to the bus stop. The bus dropped us off right at the start this year, much better than walking up that hill as we had done last year. Bruce Paige was harping on about starting the race early, I didnt think he could (or would) but sure enough it started 5mins earlier than scheduled.. they must have really wanted to get the bridge re-open I guess.

My goal today was to start with the 55min group as a guide and then hopefully improve on last years time of 56:40... The plan didnt go quite to plan, I started closer to the sub-50 group and half way down the descent of the bridge the sub-55 pacers flew past me. I guess they had gotten held up at the start and were making up for it, it was a bit of a shock though! More of a shock was when the sub-60 pacer drew up alongside me just after 3km! I didnt feel like I was going super fast, but I was sure I was going quicker than that. I could hear the pacer telling his guys 'we're going a bit fast but dont worry, it'll even out now' the guys in his crowd looked puffed already. I got to 4km at 18.20 (4.35pace) and the sub-60 pacer was ahead of me, 1.40 quicker than they should have been and at just 4km as well. The pacer actually turned around and started heading back down the road, I guess he realised just how much quicker he had been going. It was a bit of a relief for me too, my watch and legs were telling me I was going quicker but you just never know. So, a third of the race was gone and I was running by myself with my ipod for company. Figured I may as well play a little game and decided to pick everyone with a red shirt off one-by-one; I think I got to 7 red shirts between 6-10km. At 10km Tesso came up beside me, I had just figured her and Clairie were ahead, but actually they made a quick stop in the little girls portable room and were now flying up beside me and then disappearing in to the distance somewhere.

I crossed the line at 55.52, so a 50second pb which I was more than happy with. Knee and hip gave me a bit of a problem around half way, I could feel myself swinging slightly to one-side to elivate it, which of course will end up making it worse. Lots of stretching on the cards for tonight, oh, and on the recommendation of Hannah I (and Mr Chelle) are going to the Float Centre on Wednesday night. We go on holiday on Thursday so thought this would be a nice start to it :)