Blackmore's Half Marathon

Although we knew we wouldn't be in peak shape, we decided we had to do the Blackmore's Half Marathon in Sydney so we could experience running across the Harbour Bridge! We waited so long to purchase plane tickets that we ended up making a very short trip of it - flying up early Saturday morning and flying back late Sunday night - but it turned out to be an absolutely lovely weekend. There was a little concern when Kristi took a nasty fall Tuesday prior to the race, scraping up hands and knees and experiencing foot pain, but she took it easy and is happy to report all went well during the run.

We were up at 4:45am Saturday to make our 6:30am flight and were in the Sydney CBD by 8:30am. Let's just say there's no real reason to have arrived so early since nothing was open and packet pick-up didn't start until 10, but fortunately we were able to chill at The Rocks Market for a while. 'Chill' is probably not the right word as it was a steamy day - a high of 34!

Fortunately Heidi had arranged for family friends Mark and Malika, with daughters Lana and Selena, to meet with us on Saturday. They took us out of town to Palm Beach, which was a wonderful way to escape the heat of the city and have a pre-race relax. We had a great time watching the girls play in the water and the sand, and we even had time to take a little cat-nap. Then we headed to Ms Maquarie's Chair in the city to watch the sun set and have a bit of a snack before heading to the hotel and hitting the hay.

Sunday morning we were up very early for the 6:20am race start...but apparently not early enough. One of the trains was cancelled so we ended up at the start line right as the whistle blew. Fortunately there were thousands of people running and we had time to make our way into the starting chute. The day was great and the run was nice - rolling hills and sun, starting by running over the bridge and ending by the Opera House. Nothing to complain about (except the terrible Aussie race directing - yet again they ran out of all sports drink and were having trouble keeping up with water, and keeping the dirt out of it!)

Heidi waited at the finish - she finished in 1:50 and we came in with a respectable 2:11 - and then we spent a while trying to figure out how much free stuff we could get at the Recovery Village. Back at our hotel we were able to watch the marathoners from our 6th floor window as we got ready for the day and they headed out on the last half of their race. We spent the rest of the day eating, shopping (Heidi got a cool new convertable shirt/skirt/top and Josh found Kristi the perfect RipCurl jumper), and walking all over Sydney. The day ended with dinner at a cafe on Darling Harbour and were able to spend a bit of time catching up with Kristi's colleague Cecilia and her sister Carolina.

When we got to the airport we found our late flight had been delayed even further (gotta love Qantas), but Kristi and Heidi were able to get quite a bit of homework done before enjoying a good sleep on the flight home. Another great weekend!