running race (Two Bays Trail Run) 2:38:13 [4] 27.4 km (5:46 / km)
shoes: Asics Gel 2150
About all I know of Mornington peninsula is that we went to mum's cousin's beach house at Dromana when I was 9, and I think we went up Arthur's Seat to the lookout. Driving down on Sat with Blair I looked up and decided the climb shouldn't be worse than going up Randell's Reserve to Belair. Hopping on the 6am bus from Cape Schanck (the 28km finish line; over 100 people were running back again for 56km) with Zoe & Naomi, I wasn't so sure. My hamstrings had woken me in the night and the anti-inflammatories hadn't taken effect yet, but they did by the start line.
First 3km is up the hill, plenty of people passed me on the road but on the walking track I overtook a few up the steps, and a few more on the contouring descent which I ran quite hard meaning that when I got to the evil little pinch before the steep firetrail descent, I was suddenly completely lactic. By about 8km, at the bottom of the hill, I was really empty/hungry so grazed on a nutrigrain bar over the next 3km - boardwalk along the creek was lovely, the long slow uphill along a dirt road, not so much. A couple of women I'd passed earlier got past me here. 14km, halfway, seemed to take forever to come up. I went through in about 81 min, it was nice to get some encouragement from Chilliman (Pete Mullins) who was marshalling at the start of Greens Bush.
From here on the trail was soft underfoot through stringybarks, yakkas and bracken, with little descents into and ascents out of flowing creeks, but none of them too bad. I counted down the km one by one, ate another nutrigrain bar between 18 and 21, then my usual (for a half marathon) jellybean each km for the last 7km. The only problem with having had a couple of (necessary) rest days beforehand was not being hungry enough to eat as much pasta as I had intended. Anyway, crossed the final road at the (late) 22km mark and settled into plodding through the sand under the banksias and teatree. No grand ocean views as I had hoped, but I was glad it wasn't sunny. Had to walk the steep climb out of the last creek at 25k but felt better for it and better still to see the lighthouse just before 27 and realise that the last km wasn't going to be a full one!
Quite happy with time even if it felt like more of an effort than it should have. Worth coming back to improve on next year, I reckon :) We hung around to watch Zoe & Naomi finish in about 3:23 (pretty good since Zoe's training runs had been on average 30 min), picnicked with them in the car park, then went to find a beach.