Melbourne Marathon

What a positively terrific Sunday.  I had plans to go to Melbourne to watch the runners in the races, the Marathon, the Half Marathon and hopefully pick out friends who were running.  I would have desperately have loved to have entered one of the races, but it wasn't to be.  I didn't particularly want to stay up in Melbourne overnight as I have a weekend up there coming up next month.  And despite staying at mum's the night before, the first train from Geelong on a Sunday came in after the races had started.   So it wasn't to be.  I might not have been running but I made a great cheer squad.

However I didn't see any of my friends who were running, neither the Warrnambool & Surrounds 12wbt crew, or the 12wbt Runners Connect group.  I did however see my very good friend (except he doesn't know that we are friends!! tee hee) the wonderful Steve Moneghetti fly past heading to the finish line.  Check out the length of the stride.  I barely shuffled 10 inch paces at this stage of the half!  He obviously didn't get the Runners Connect memo though - peace signs arms up in the air when you cross the finish line! ha.

I think the reason I missed so many of my friends running was because I had my head buried in the app.   Hey Cat, I took this screen shot from one of the times I was checking your progress.  Cool huh?  I could see your little stick figure running.  A huge congratulations to you too for completing the marathon.

So yes, you could key someone's bib number in and see where they were up to on the route.  So basically you'd know if they were getting close to finishing.  So a few times I popped a bib number of one of my friends in only to find they had finished the race, darn it!

So another reason I wasn't going to run is getting to meet up with these ladies.  Now those who know my crafty self know I do digital scrapbooking.  Well Sharon here (of ksharonk fame) was the first digital designer who gave me a gig on her creative team way back when.  Esther (who you will recognise in the black from my USA travel) got a gig too.  We came as guests and simply stayed.  So I've "known" Sharon for a long long time but never met.  When we found out her husband would be running the marathon ... great work to the D-man, wanting to finish in 4 hours and he finished 3 hours 59 mins 59 seconds!!!! ... well we knew this was our chance.

Esther had been gallivanting about on another overseas holiday and was flying in that morning, so kudos to her husband for not whisking her away home as soon as the plane landed.  We found each other amongst the crowd.  Oh Lordy Lord, amongst 30,000 runners and family members and general public, it was bedlam, but find each other we did.  Not so the car when it came time to leave after the D-man finished and slightly recovered (he was kind of speaking Alien speak at the end of the race, not making much sense at all !)

But finally we were headed back to Albert Park to their hotel and once the D-man was upstairs resting, we went down to the lounge area and talked up a storm.  It was like we had known each other forever, which we kind of felt like we had, we had just never met Sharon before.  It was terrific.  And so happy that she was in "Sharon Green" too!  So that was definitely the highlight of the day.

So train to Geelong and then drove back 2 hours home here.  Exhausted but oh so happy.

Now I just have to work on my subliminal messages to try to convince the D-man he needs to do more Victorian races so we get to hang out again!!  :-)

A huge congratulations to friends who were running, I had you all on my list and was checking your progress regularly.  I think I will have to bite the bullet next year, despite the fact that the crowds out there running would have terrified me.  I have the City2Sea coming up, that might give me a taste of a big race!