Mike here.
It's time. The cumulation of our Southern Adventure. When Janine and I run the Queenstown Marathon. The full marathon for Janine and the half marathon for me.
I can't say that I'm particularly ready. My training programme has consisted of:
- Going to Nepal for three weeks - and catching Covid
- Recovering from Covid
- Doing one 8km run at Tekapo about two weeks ago
- Tramping and e-biking - but not running. At all.
Yesterday was my rest and tapering day, where I squeezed all my recovery from not running into one 24 hour stretch. I booked myself in for a lower body massage in the hope that the massage therapist would put all the strength and endurance back into my legs somehow. We also said goodbye to Callan and Stacey as they headed away to catch up with family and go on more adventures.
We carb loaded at The Cow Pizza House for dinner. And that was that for preparation.
Now it's race day. Janine and I are are up early. We load up with coffee and breakfast. Out and ready for our 6:30am buses to our respective starting lines.
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| 6:20am, smiles for the camera. |
My bus takes me out towards Lake Hayes and Speargrass Flat Road. We unload into a huge field with a row of porta-loos at one end. I queue for one. The queue ends up snaking over the whole field.
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| 7:51am. Start chute. Nerves are building. |
8:16am I'm off. It feels good. For the first 10 km.
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| 8:50am. I can do this! |
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| 9:20am, I'm even taking first person photos. |
At the 10km mark, all of a sudden, I hit a wall. I go from doing my thing to feeling exhausted.
Now it's time to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and don't stop.
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| 9:50am. Just keep going. |
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| 10:45am. Nearly done. And nearly done. |
Angela is there to cheer me on at the end. I try to put a game face on and fail completely. The last few hundred metres twist through the town which lets Angela cut the corners and keep up with me. At last I see the finish line.
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| 10:50am, whew. Done. |
That was so, so hard but I feel incredibly proud to have finished uninjured, pushing through 12km of pain. 2:34 is very slow but it is not a DNF. I keep that photo of me near the end on hand from now on. I don't want to feel like that at the end of a half marathon again.
I hobble off back to the hostel to shower and change. I have a bit of time before Janine gets in on her full marathon.
Janine gets in, her time is 6:24. Huge effort. 42.2km, I can't comprehend running that far. And she still has a smile on her face.
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| Our medals! |
We wander back to the hostel again, then off to Ferg Burger for dinner at the Hostel dining room. The view is beautiful. The dining room is pleasantly buzzing. I chat to a woman who is working hospo and was treated quite badly at her last job. She had to meet with HR to talk about how she couldn't just break her contract like that. The HR person ended up taking detailed notes about exactly how bad her manager behaved.
Don't treat people in hospo badly. Especially in Queenstown, in 2022, when you can't get good staff anywhere. There are 'staff wanted' signs everywhere. Lots of places are closed because they just don't have enough staff to open.
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| Ferg burger and a Speights at the Hostel |
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| I love hostel life. Free beer on the dining room table. |
What a finale to our 2022 Southern Adventure. We crammed so so much into just eleven days. I am really proud of what I achieved today. But I never want to run a half marathon like this again. The expression on my face near the end of the half is going to be my motivation for next time.
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