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It was July 29th, 2018 as I set off at 5:15 am to catch the train to the city for the Run Melbourne half marathon, fellow runners were also on the same train, while the train was not busy it had quite a few more people than you may expect for 5.30am on a Sunday morning. The race starts at 7 am, but the event advise is to be there at 6 am to ensure you are ready in time. This year the charity runners were given a special starting place which was quite good, as we stood there at the start waiting for the officials to fire the gun everyone was getting excited. The elite performers were the first to go off the line, they got a few minutes and then the rest of us got to toe the line for our start.

It was a good temperate for a July run and as I set off I felt quite relaxed, although you always need a bit of time to settle into the run. The first 5 k’s were going well, I assessed how everything was going and thought to myself it would be good to back off a little bit. I focused on maintaining a consistent pace and tried to run my own race, it’s very difficult sometimes not to hook on to a person in front of you and before you know it you are running at a pace that is not right for you. This the third Run Melbourne I have run, so I feel the experience from the prior runs have enabled me to be more measured in the event and not get carried away. Things were going well into 14 k’s but at this point, I was starting to feel it, for some reason I was getting some pain in my right knee, not sure why as it has never happened before (you never know with running, things come up without you expecting it). So at this point, it became more of a mental struggle, then just to make it a little more uncomfortable, what else but a big dumping of rain (it wouldn’t be Melbourne with rain hey). I think for about 10 minutes or so it rained, but the first 5 minutes were very heavy rain and at this point, you were soaked through, then it became very cold and all you can do is just keep running.

Between the rain, cold and pain I had to just keep focused on the goal of getting to the end and standing by my commitment of completing the half marathon, which had made to all the people who sponsored me. At the 18k mark, I checked in with my watch and after a quick calculation realised I could actually get a PB if I dug deep and pushed hard. So I came up with a plan of keeping the pace above a certain level while trying to save something for the last 2k’s. At the 2k point I pushed hard, with much pain I might add but was very happy to cross the finish line.

At the end of the day, its really not about how I did in the run, its more about the success off the course with the fundraising for charity, I’m very happy to have raised almost $3,500 for beyondblue and I’m sure this will be a great help to the work they do. I would like to thank all the people whole have shown support and sponsored me this year as without you we could not have achieved such a great result. So well done to you for helping out.

What better way to sign off than with a victorious photo at the finish with my medal on full display :).

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