Our Endless Summer: We Did it! Sydney's City to Surf 14K

About to cross the finish line.

  Sunday. August 14th. Eric can not believe we did it... he did it that is - he says he knew I could do it. :-) What you ask? Well run with eighty-five thousand people from Sydney's City Center to Bondi Beach of course. It was a 14k (8.9 miles) and tho we do some jogging together in the mornings we were not very well trained for a run like this. I have run that far, but Eric has not --- so what better time to run that far for the first time, than in a race with more people than the Boston Marathon and Manhattan Marathon combined.
  It actually turned out to be quite the pleasant experience. Tho we got split up during the race, as Eric has to make a pit stop, and I knew I had to keep moving or I would not be able to keep up my jogging pace; we both finished in times that we can say we are proud of for our first 14Ks.
  We were most impressed with Sydney's transportation organization and the race's organization it self. We expected mass chaos just with getting to and from the race alone and it all ran smoothly. We got up when it was still dark and took the totally packed fast ferry (running at 6:15am just for race day) with all the other runners over to Circular Quay. Sydney had extra busses running but we just followed all the people walking in the direction of the race and easily found the start. The race had different group starting points depending on when you signed up, so that the race did not become 85,000 people pushing and shoving each other up the streets.
  Our starting time was not till around 9pm, but the first groups had started long enough before us that we might have been able to watch their finish on the TV coverage, in a coffee shop had we not already been cued up in our starting pin. We wanted to at least make sure we were not in the back of our group.

We got metals and our name in the newspaper.

  It had been raining early in the morning so the weather was not hot at all and there was a bit of an overcast. The course was by no means flat. It went through tree covered neighborhoods all through Sydney, up the (closed) highway and even through tunnels - which was quite the cool experience to run through. People lined the streets, had parties going in their front yards while they cheered us on, and all through out the entire course were live bands playing music for us or sound systems blasting music of an encouraging beat. We however really never noticed the music as our own headphones drowned out everything around us.
  Around the halfway point is when I lost Eric to the bathroom break. There were tables with people handing out water and gatoraid to gulp down and toss the cups back on the side of the road. Sydney had encouraged racers to where old "jumpers" as they call them (jackets) that way as one sheds their layers they can toss them on the side of the road and they will get picked up and donated to charity. So you can image what the sides of the course looked like... clothes everywhere.
  There was one part of the course that is called heart break hill. It was AS bad as we expected but it was a long long ways up the hill. It seemed like it went on forever. My tactic for keeping myself running the whole time was to not look up. If I could see the huge stream of people ahead of me and could tell how I still had to run that far I would quickly loose my motivation.... thus I found it better to just stare at the ground and keep my feet moving.
  I found that towards the last few kilometers of the race, when people were really putting on the pace is when I felt the best. As soon as I found a girl to pace myself with and just swing my arms back and forth at the same speed as her I was golden. The problem was when I lost her and when I could not figure out where the end of the race was.

At the finish at Bondi Beach

As we got to Bondi Beach, the course started to go back up and I could not see the end. That combined with really slow song that came on my ipod at the most inopportune time made for a very irritated runner. I finally figured out that I could not see the end of the race because there was a switch back down the hill, and boy was I pumped when I ran around the curve. At this point people were cheering, the cameras were clicking and I was ready to put on my lighting shoes... well thats what I felt like anyway. I made it through the finish and it felt great! I have now seen a video of my finish and it's quite hilarious to me. Just think if Feebee from friends running in the Central Park with Rachael. Yah, thats me.
Oh yah, and Eric made it too! I am so proud of him!