Sydney Marathon 2008

Well, the weeks of lonely sunday mornings home alone with Maeghan while Derrick put a few miles into the legs have all been leading up to today... the Sydney Marathon. The weather yesterday was 30+, which is hot. The forecast for today was supposed to be cooler, which it was, but still hot when you're running on a black tarmac road. I think the air temperature hit about 26 degrees. The result of this polite weather chit chat was that it made for fairly hard going running in the race today.


After 3 years of spectating the marathon, I've got the routine down pat. The only difference this year was that I had a little tag-along in the name of Maeghan. After an early start, we dropped Derrick at the start line at 6.30am for a 7.15 start. Then it's off across town to the 10km mark to wait for the runners. The good thing about the point that I camp at, is the runners go past about 3 times as they work through the course.


At the first sighting, we were camped just near the drinks station. Maeghan was having a great time crawling around & exploring. The only problem was, she was also interested in chasing all the empty drinks cups being thrown around. A strong chance of being trodden on if you crawl onto the track. At the 10km, 15km and then 20km mark, Derrick was still looking fit and on track for a sub 3.30hr time. After the 3rd sighting, we high-tailed it across to the finish line with Maeghan catching a quick nap in the car on the way.

Expecting around a 3.30hr time, we were there at about the 3.15hr mark to cheer Derrick on. 3.30 came and went. Then 3.40... then I'm thinking that maybe I missed him run past, which I have done before. We decide to wander around to the recovery area to see if we could find him. We did, though he hadn't been cooling down for about 10mins as I thought, he had only just crossed the finish line seconds after we turned our backs. Seems that the downside of marathons is that on a bad day, the legs can also cramp up pretty badly and you have push through the pain and hope that you can recover enough to finish the race. Well he did it, with a time of 3 hours & 44 minutes. Well done Derrick, we're proud of you.

Maeghan was so proud of her Daddy that she volunteered to help with the recovery session by giving Derrick a free back massage.

Well that's the marathon for another year. I think there's some crazy talk starting already... something to do with the Canberra marathon in March, but I'm sure there's a lot more work to be done before we get to that.