Last weekend of course was the Gold Coast mega event and I was on-line Sunday in between gardening duties, checking live results as the marathon progressed. Geoff W finished in 3:45:01 and as we noted last week, he’ll now bring his experience and good humour to the CRR Gold Kokoda Challenge team on 17 and 18 July (yes guys, you'll still be out there on the 18th).
Speaking of the challenge, neither Black nor Gold teams could even start without the support of a tireless crew. Mappo, Tim and others have offered to spend most of their weekend, starting Friday night, out in the cold driving from point to point, supporting each team with hydration and food, foregoing sleep and comfort to help us finish the event. Our sincere thanks fellas.
Also in the GC results Stephen B in 3:48:54. Haven’t seen Stephen around the traps for a while but he’s obviously still going strong. Another stranger in recent times is David Gill who ran an excellent 3:31:10 this year, a huge improvement over 3:56:56 last year. Congratulations.
Our debut marathoners, "Aussie" Anja and Bill B, turned in great results. If you look at the GC results page take a peak at their splits for each 5k. Remarkably consistent right to the end where each had just a little bit left to push home. In the lead up to the event I did hear somewhere that a sub 4 hour target would be considered a good outcome. Well, they smashed that with 3:55:04 and 3:55:55 respectively. Congratulations to you both on a brilliant debut.
Nicole P suffered bad cramps in the second half but still finished her second attempt at this distance under 5 hours. As we all know, just to finish upright over this distance is a great achievement. Young David was slowed by blisters and a less than ideal lead up to the 10k on Saturday which included a 40 kilometre training run on the previous Thursday as well as a normal training load in the pool. He still finished in 43 minutes.
Zorro took on the half challenge finishing in 1:36:02 just ahead of Glen in 1:37:49. Both should be very happy with sub 100 minute finishes, and another notch in the half marathon belt. Not able to pick up Glen’s partner from the marathon results but I’ll try to get this and include next week.
Finally, I had a phone call from Brad on Friday before the marathon seeking advice on a serious lower leg injury he’d been struggling with. I couldn’t help much although I’ve had a similar problem for almost 4 months but have no idea what to do about it or what it is other than it’s damn painful. As Brad described it “Like someone’s hit me in the shin with a cricket bat”.
So I was most surprised to see Brad’s splits in the real time results as the Gold Coast marathon unfolded. He was consistently clocking under 21 minutes for each 5k. I found out subsequently he was running with Steve Moneghetti and the 3 hour pack but Steve’s splits were just a tad quick. Brad stuck it out to finish in 2:59:30 or 2:59:13 nett. I found out his tactic was to cane it early on and see what happened but after 5k the leg felt OK and he pressed on. Fantastic result. Wife Natasha finished in 3:45:04 and I see some little K’s in the Dash event too so it was a real family event.
As mentioned in the last Wrap, not everyone could make it to Woodford for the last handicap event. The Egs and Griffs were committed to the Point Cartwright series on the same day. This is a great series of races in a top spot and one which we all should consider supporting in a big way next year.
In the 5k event evergreens Gundars and Robyn E both ran well to cement their places in each respective age category while the Griffs onslaught continued led by Brennan who finished in 10th place overall among all the blokes, young and old, closely followed by Thomas, Mum and Leah.
Don't forget the next Handicap event on Sunday 11 July 2010 at Beerburrum State School. And remember this interesting trivia:- at its peak Beerburrum is 44.9 metres above sea level or about the height of a 15 storey building.
