The Horrie and Belinda Show

6/8/05

Belinda and I headed out for a run over the majority of the Sydney Marathon course, giving the City West link a miss but heading over the Harbour Bridge and back for a run I estimated to be around 34km. With our commitments tomorrow and the City 2 Surf on next week, this was our last opportunity to get a feel for the marathon course.

We started off at the Todman Ave turnaround and headed along Anzac Pde into the city, down along Hickson Rd but missed the killer hill at the 39-40km mark. I guess we will have to keep that a surprise for the big day. We headed around into The Rocks up George St to the Harbour Bridge, over it before doing a lap of Bradfield Park before heading back over the Harbour Bridge, across the Cahill Expressway, up Macquarie St, around the Mrs Macquaries Chair loop. It was around this point that I noticed the GPS wasn't getting a reading. A check through the splits after we finished showed we ran 1.7km in 30 minutes. Somehow I don't think we were running that slow. I feel as though we lost around 3km in this period. It was very pleasant running this section before we headed through Oxford St, which was shocking with footpath work being done as well as all the traffic. It got better again once we got to the beginning of Anzac Pde running along Moore Park before heading into Centennial Park doing the figure 8 and heading back up to Anzac Pde and turning into Alison Rd until where the racecourse ends and heading back to Anzac Pde and finishing in Todman Ave. The GPS showed we ran 32.6km in 3:34 but looking at the splits, I have estimated we probably lost around 3km in that 30 minute period so the run was closer to the 35km mark.

It was a great hitout and Belinda finished feeling great and said she could have kept going if she needed to. This has given Belinda a lot of confidence and she isn't as daunted by the prospect of finishing the marathon as she was before today.