It is amazing how quickly you forget the struggle of the last few kms of a marathon, I guess this is why you keep coming back to them to try and chip a little more off a previous time or just see if you can 'pace' yourself better and feel better... anyway the 2012 Dunedin marathon was held on a perfectly clear blue sky Dunedin morning with a light breeze to keep you at a good temperature. As per usual the marathon in my mind is the 32km warm up for the 10km run at the end to give all that you have left. This was to be a good test on my body being a good distance and time duration to see that the kidney repair I had in March was 100% successful when the boyd was under a good level of stress (all the CT scans etc had shown this was all good, but your own physical thrashing is always a good measure too!) I ran the first 21km at a pace slightly quicker than i should have, running around 4.30 per km, this was evened out and brought my time down a little in the 2nd half as once i got to the 35km mark my km pace was cut down to size considerably. My target time of 3hrs30min was a good achievable time to target without completely destroying myself and i ended up just off this coming in with 3hrs40min. A good pleasing time and result, the night before the Marathon both Cherie (who ran her first half marathon in this event also) and I were running on about 4 hours sleep due to our two little ones having unsettled sleeps as they both had colds, so it was a pretty quiet time on our house after this run this year! Anyway wiht my sights set on completing the Challenge Wanaka full iron disatance race in January the marathon was a good early checkpoint of my running and everything is sitting good, so over the next few months it will be a good time to maintain the running and build up some good time on the bike as well as getting out and about enjoying some fun missions on the MTB. The next couple of events are a few small running races before Josh Harris' chapter 2 of the Dunedin Mazda 12 hour Adventure Challenge, which if it is anything like his first 4 hour race he put together it will be great!
