Marathon #4

Today we finished our fourth marathon and our first international marathon - the Melbourne Marathon - which we learned is the largest marathon event in Australia (the race director compared it to the Boston Marathon, but he never should have even gone there - see below). We'll start out this race report noting that this definitely wasn't our best marathon, nor was it our worst. We were happy with the overall outcome - an unofficial 4:33 - considering the lack of training that went into our race preparation (prior to this race, Josh's longest run in his IM training program had been 13 miles; and Kristi managed to only get in two 20-milers and struggled with doing any speedwork) and considering how often we've managed to get sick over the past couple of months (the Friday before the race Kristi's sinuses flared up yet again, but fortunately she caught it early enough that she felt okay by race day - yeah to the mum for donating Tylenol Sinus to the cause!)

So on to the race report (also check out the photos). It was a warm sunny day (resulting in sunburned shoulders for both of us) with a cool cross wind at points throughout the race, which was refreshing. The half and full marathons started together, with the half marathoners turning off about the 14km marker. After the half marathoners turned off, there was an out-and-back portion of the race (about 6-7 miles in each direction) with rolling hills and beach views, and then we turned with about 9km left and headed towards the MCG. The highlights of the race for us - seeing friends Sean & Jenn at the 11km marker cheering us on and taking pictures; the inflatable snake with someone handing out gummy snakes around 28km; and passing a Swiss fellow who was running with a jingle bell on his wrist and yodeling at various folks as he ran past (he was truly enjoying his day).

Unfortunately the low-lights list is a big longer than the highlights - the race started 20 minutes late because they didn't clear the course of cars in time (which meant it was even warmer by the time we actually started running); the second water stop was completely out of water and sports drink; all drink stations were out of sports drink after approximately the 15km point (thank goodness we had packed excessive salt tablets) and some had even run out of water!; there was minimal crowd support, especially in the last 10km (we were extremely thankful for those that did come out and support - it was interesting, there were a lot of people out around town, they just didn't really take notice that a race was going on); in the last 5-10k Kristi had serious stomach cramps and Josh experienced a new quad pain; when we did make it to the finish line, there was barely anyone around to cheer us in (they sell this marathon on the fact that you run into the MCG on the same course as the Commonwealth Games and it is 'so amazing' to have the energy of all the spectators in the stands cheering for you...we expected a Bolder Boulder finish, but instead we got a couple of cheers from a few friendly volunteers); the post-race nourishment included water, sports drink, and half of a crunchy pear; and to top it off, Kristi ended up in the med room after her massage with dizzy spells and nausea (fortunately, the medics were great and after spending time laying down and bundled up with a warm cup of tea, everything magically got better).

Despite all of the complaining, we did finish and lived to tell about it. And it was interesting to be cheered on by a different crowd - instead of always being 'almost there' we were told we were 'nearly there', a small difference but it made us smile. It was an experience, but let's just say we will not be signing up for the Melbourne Marathon again. We would consider the half, but will likely find a different event for our second international marathon.