After getting an e-visa in time (apparently as I was let in), I promptly began with sleeping off the jet lag, followed by collecting the rental van. Then what… Ah yes, how about the 1st race of 2020? Excellent, the Narrabeen Midnight Marathon it is then!
The event:
The Midnight Marathon is really a side show to the All Nighter, where runners run the same course for 12hrs to complete as much distance as possible. I wasn’t keen to do that much (this is a holiday after all) so I signed up for just the marathon. The course was a very short out and back loop totalling just a little over 5k, so 8 laps were needed for the Marathon distance.
The track is off road gravel track with a little bit of concrete near the turn around, and winds alongside Narrabeen Lagoon, about an hour North of Sydney.
The event was nice and small, with a really local feel, seemed like all levels were present.
The race:
We kicked off just after midnight, of course I set off too quick again! And beat out the 1st lap. The day had been extremely warm, though cooler than what had been the norm in the weeks before. The wind was quite strong, and blasted us like a hair dryer! The dust was thick too, and caked the mouth! The combination of the two meant that the kms were brutally tiring. There so happened to be a backpacker party in the field just after the start turn around, blasting pumping tunes, keeping us going until the cops showed up around 2am to shut it down. It was my 1st time racing on such a short course, it was strange to be turning around so often, and you couldn’t really switch off and zone out to pass the kms like on a round trip course. It also felt strange to be covering such distance without really going anywhere. I’m undecided as to whether I liked or disliked the feeling.
After the turn arounds you were greeted by the other runners coming up the other side of the track, this gave an acute sensation of being chased, and just how much room there was between you both ahead and behind.
The result:
I wasn’t going for any pbs in this one, just a nice fun one. I did 4:20 (lit) which was good for off road actually for me. That gave me 7th place over all. The top men did about 3hr times!
The real accomplishments were the all nighters, doing about 100k over the 12hrs on average. They started long before I was even dressed for the night, and once I’d done the marathon, showered, crashed out in the van in the car park, woke up after a few hours, they were still running, just finishing the last few laps!
Up next:
As I rest the legs a bit, I head North to do some DIVES!
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Fun Once Its Done 
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