Wednesday, 12 July 2006

Zel's Gold Coast Marathon

Posted by speedygeoff on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 with
Zel won't mind me publishing this here. He is most grateful to all the people who helped get him to the marathon, including a few of those who will read this. It was a pleasure to be one of many contributing to Zel's progress.

Hello all,

Just to let you know, I managed to finish the Gold Coast Marathon in 3:40:11 but failed to qualify for the mother of all marathons - Boston 2007. I will try to do 3:30 in Sydney or Melbourne later this year.

It was, really, fantastic event with 20K+ participants. The temperature, for us Canberrans, was less impressive - in the last two hours of the race it reached 20+C°.

Overall, it was easier then I suspected. It is funny how occasionally fear of the unknown can be more horrifying then the unknown. From the beginning of the race I waited for something to happen to me after the 36th kilometer, but instead of a big bad wolf, I was humiliated by number leggy blondes who breezed by.

The pacers in my running group were horrible. We have been constantly running at different pace ranging from 4 .25 min/km to 4.50 min/km. After 15 km we were 4.5 min ahead of our targeted time...Until I dropped out, after 33 km, we haven’t run even two minutes at 4:58, which was my and their target.

I wish to sincerely thank you all for all your support in helping me get from 0 km/Hr to almost 12 km/Hr over 42 km in 14 months.

See you all in a month’s time.

Best regards,

Zel