Victory!!

At the start line

I declare today the national day of ice-packs and relax! Yes, I made it. The whole half-marathon, and I'm still a little surprised. Well, maybe not surprised but it feels surreal.

Saturday night I was in bed at 9:45pm. I had my bag packed, my running gear out. My belly was stuffed with pasta and I was ready for the big day ahead. Then I tossed and turned until around midnight without sleep, then when I got to sleep I had nightmares of missing the start time for my race and my whole family were there and everyone was disappointed in me. When the alarm rang I sprang into action, happy and relieved that it had all been a dream and now I had a second chance at making the race on time.

6am I was in the car to the city. 7am I was having photos taken with the other pink-shirted ASRC runners. 7:30am and I didn't want to say goodbye because I knew I'd have to go to the start line and run for three hours. 8am I was at the start line and running.

When filling in the sign-up forms I had written my expected time as 2hr30m but that morning I really thought 3hrs+ would be my finishing time. I knew I was in for a long, probably boring and painful, morning and resigned myself to the fact. My brain, body, and I all agreed that we just wanted to make the distance no matter how slow we went or how long it took us. And we were off.

Some of the Run for Refugees team. There were 400+

Okay, so now I know why they call it a 'fun run'. It is really fun - and funny - to run with thousands of people. Humans are social animals so perhaps it's that; we get high off group activities. There were points where I was in pain, or bored, or wanted to quit, but I'd made a promise and I was going to finish. I also saw people cheating i.e. cutting corners, skipping sections of the race. I saw people give up, and I saw people collapsed and crying in pain. But for some reason none of these things happened to me. I just kept going and soon I was running into the MCG, drenched, cold, exhausted, but victorious!

My final times are:

Crossing the finish line:
cold, wet, tired, and happy!

Now, this is revealing. Turns out what I think I'm capable of and what I can actually achieve are almost opposite. I thought "I'm not an athletic person, just want to complete the race, probably will walk half of it but hey, I'm happy no matter how slow I go". But what happened is that I came in 30mins quicker than I expected, I gained ground over time, and basically I am an athletic person after all. Maybe I should think better of myself next time.

Next time. Now there's the big question. Am I a runner now? Do I continue on with this, maybe think about racing again next year? Clearly I'm good at running, better than I ever thought I would be. And now that I've made 21.1kms the 8kms along the creek should be a breeze.

I've become healthier, lost weight, sharpened my mind, and discovered a whole new world of early-risers who like to keep fit. Yeah, I think I'll stick with it for a while.

 !!THANK YOU!!

Taking my medal out for a coffee.
I'm still wearing it :)

Big thanks to all who donated. It really gave me so much encouragement and support. I remember thinking at one point during the race, when I thought I'd just walk the rest of the way, "Katie, people didn't pay to see you walk, they paid to see you RUN, get going!" and it helped. Your generosity is inspiring and deeply appreciated.

A special thanks to my man Ritchie who rode his bike over 30kms yesterday to make sure he was at every turn cheering me on. He is a champion coach and a brilliant boyfriend for all he has done for me over these past 23 weeks of training.

Also special thanks to my sister Sue who gave much practical advice and encouragement. And also my mum Viv for coming along to cheer me on. She's up to week 8 of Zombies, Run! training now so perhaps you'll see her smiling face in a fun run soon!

The donate button is still there and donations can still be made until the end of the month. So if you haven't given yet and you've enjoyed the blog please click and chuck us a fiver for the ASRC. A great organisation without which none of this would have happened.