Sydney Holiday 2015, April 6

Another early start for an 8am morning race, this time with no daylight savings complications. Because the event was in Centennial Park, about three kilometres away, it meant leaving the hotel around 7am and jogging over to the location. After completing registration and trying to stay warm, the race didn't end up starting until about 8:15, with the half marathon event leaving first and then the seven kilometre race we were entered in.

The start was a mad dash like usual, so I was way down in about 20th place by the first corner, then began to overtake those who had gone out too hard, in the two or three kilometres afterwards. The fun part of this is when other people get overtaken but can't accept it, and desperately try to hang on for another couple of hundred metres - you really have to just run your own race, at a speed you are comfortable with.

By about this point Jason had just moved past me and I was happy to sit behind and follow off his pace for a while, which these days is actually more like trying not to fall behind. Because of the nature of the course being an off-road trail event, it is a little bit more difficult to run fast and close behind someone, you need to spend about half your time watching the ground. At one stage I was third in line and almost ran straight into a big log lying on the ground because my view was obstructed.

For the final two kilometres I was pretty exhausted, but just managed to match Jason's time, I didn't see any point in trying to race him across the finish line since he'd had the lead most of the way, and I wasn't really sure what position we were in overall either. My time across the line was 26:58 for seven kilometres, not great but slightly better than last year.

The reward for running yourself close to death is free pancakes for breakfast at the finish line! Also there is fruit. I got two chunky pancakes topped with nutella while we waited around forever to find out the results. After a long time I found out that I'd finished in sixth and Jason fifth - but you get trophies for the first seven.

Participation award.

After the trophies were handed out it was time for a quick dash back across Sydney to check out of the hotel by 10am - just missed out by a few minutes but it didn't matter. So that was the end of Sydney, for once I had organised plenty of time to get to the airport, have lunch and relax for a bit before the plane arrived on time once again!

That wasn't quite the end of the story though. I jumped on a bus just outside the departure door which was marked for the long term car park, we took off in the bus with several other people, went all the way to the end of the first long term car park, made all of the stops...then ended up back at the airport again! Apparently there are two different buses for long term parking - there is a whole separate bus just making one stop in the overflow long term car park - and of course no instructions or announcements to explain it. Thanks Melbourne airport...