Training was going pretty well. 12 weeks out from the marathon, I had a few months down with a calf strain. With some pretty aggressive physio I was back on my feet after a few weeks. Building volume back up went fairly will, but losing momentum 3 months out lead me to drop back to the half. I still felt pretty confident of a good time, and as I stood at the start line I felt that a 1:40 half was a realistic goal.
I rose very early on race day, and drove down to the Gold Coast, taking the tram from Helensvale. This part of the trip ran seamlessly, there was parking, the tram was great, went straight to Southport to the race precinct. I dropped my gear off at the bag tent, chilled out for a bit, soaked up some atmosphere, and finally joined the starting pack.
I set myself up at the front of start group B, we're talking 1:40 or so. I ran into a good acquaintance, and celebrated reaching the start line of the Gold Coast for another year.
The atmosphere at the start line was pretty electric, I was pumped. An hour-forty half marathon was in my grasp. Somewhere up the front the gun went off, and the crowd slowly started to move.
The start of an event like this is pretty crowded - there's not much room and it stays that way until the crowd thins out. There's usually a bit of jostling, but people are normally pretty polite.
As I ran across the start line, the crowd was quite a bit thicker than I expected, and wasn't as quick as I was expecting; I was coming up against people and finding it difficult to get around them without pushing. No one want to be that guy, and I was trying not to be a dick.
The right hand barricade was set up on the median strip and there was room to run, so I stepped up onto the median strip and made my way past a few slower runners. About 600m into the race, as I placed my right foot onto the ground, another runner jumped up into the median strip and knocked me off balance, my ankle gave an audible crack.
I stopped, aware instantly that the race was done, and also that getting home was going to be a bit of a mission.
This blog has gone one long enough. I saw a nice sunrise, and it was a mission getting home.
6 months of training, done. If that other runner had been a single second ahead or behind, it would have been a different outcome, but here we are.
Talking to the physio a few weeks later, it was a grade 2 ankle sprain. I'm finally back running 6 weeks later, but man, motivation is eluding me. I was pretty heartbroken at the time. Also the finisher's shirt was really good this year.
I'm not sure what this means for the future. I';m going to continue, I still want that BQ, but I feel like I'm back at the start.