Notes
Okay, so in hindsight, tacking this on to my schedule and hoping to dominate was just wishful thinking. Leaving Wednesday afternoon, arriving Thursday afternoon, race Saturday morning? Yeah right. Feeling rested and NOT being a gassy mess from airplanes and airplane food? Yeah right. Basically today didn't go so well. But... what are you going to do?! Two words. Training. Run.
Anyway this was a total local country NZ event, running from Leeston to Southbridge (hometown of Dan Carter) then back to Leeston, all about 45 minutes from Christchurch. Lots of farmland, lots of sheep. All good. Weather was good for running. Moments of sunshine, but generally cloudy and mildly warm. Sunned up after the race though.
Got in behind the 1:50 pace runner (pace runners are AWESOME), but unfortunately I got burned off at 5K. Dammit. However at 5K I hit my race gels. No, not my normal ones. I forgot to buy them... so bought something totally random here. However it didn't seem to be a problem. Also had the tunes going (first time for me in a race), however by 10K I had ripped them out of my ears. They were slipping out due to the sweat and I was done with the music too - all good at the start though.
Don't have much memory of the 5K and 17K aid stations, but the 9K aid station was being run by chicks in leotards and the 13K was being run by kids.
All seemed to be going fine until... I got to the 15K mark or so. As always. Started getting cramps in my calves again. Sudden biting ones. Worst for the season. Drank a lot of water, plus 750mls of PowerAde, on Friday. Felt I drank enough pre-race, and then hit both water and sports drink at the aid stations (even though you are not meant to mix gels with sports drink) Still happened though. Got slower and slower and finally hobbled across the finish line.
Kinda funny as we started off dominating the left-hand side of the road (with the traffic) with a police escort, but by the end we were (barely) running on the road with normal traffic going both ways. They had road cones leading you to the finish as well, but at times it wasn't really that clear where to go. Local event, so no big deal though...
FYI. I was eight minutes faster three weeks ago. Was faster in Beer River eight weeks ago as well. Oh well...