Gold Coast 2015, July 05 (Growing Pains)

Sunday was an even earlier start due to the 6am starting time for the half marathon (yet the full marathon only starts at 7am). I grabbed a quick muesli bar for a snack at 4:45am before suffering a nose bleed while getting ready for no obvious reason. We walked over to the tram stop at 5am to go about four stops north to the start at Southport - I expected the trams to be full since we were so from the start of the tram line down at Broadbeach, but Jason hoped otherwise. It turned out I was right as both trams that came through were packed to the limit, like trying to take a train to the Melbourne Showgrounds!

My foot was already starting to feel sore while just standing around waiting 10 minutes for the tram, which wasn't a good sign. With the trams ruled out we set off walking to the start line instead, as did most other people. It was around 3-4 kilometres to the start which wasn't ideal, but served as a warm up I suppose. We arrived just as they were letting people on to the road to line up, so we got a great spot near the front of the A group - for people that run under 1 hour 40 minutes or something. All of the announcements prior to the race were being made in both English and Japanese...

And then we were off! I began at a very slow speed of about 4:25/km to see how my foot responded - but it was still very dark so I could hardly read the time on my watch. By about the 3 kilometre mark my foot was killing every time I landed on it, I was close to either giving up or walking the rest of the race, but decided to stick it out a little longer and tried to be tread even softer on my left foot. At about 5 kilometres in there was a small turnaround loop where you can see the people ahead coming back the other way, but I didn't spot Jason so he must have been even more than 500 metres ahead already.

I managed to make it through to the halfway turnaround without the pain getting any worse, although due to a change in my running action my right hip had tightened up as well. Because the course is almost directly up and back you get to see everyone ahead of you coming back the other way - first the leaders who were probably 10 minutes ahead already, then I spotted Jason about a kilometre ahead as well too.

After the halfway mark the pain seemed to have gone from a 10/10 down to a 7/10 so I was able to speed up a little to about 4:10/km. I set a goal of seeing if I could catch the 1 hour 30 minutes pace group, who were just in sight down the road. A highlight on the way back was some cool calypso music playing at the 15 kilometre mark, which lifted my spirits temporarily. By about 18 kilometres I finally started to struggle a bit, and it was starting to warm up too, but I caught the pace group ahead at last after 19 kilometres which was a relief, then sprinted out the finish to beat my goal by about 50 seconds and just made the top 400 (399 out of nearly 9000).

At the end of the race you get to collect your free t-shirt and finisher medal, then they had the standard drinks and fruit tables. There was no trouble getting the tram back to the hotel at least, and we were all done by about 8:30am, much earlier than I expected.

The hotel had a decent free breakfast with cereals, toast and some "warm" pancakes that I suspect had been sitting around for some time. After breakfast a tram and bus ride took us out to the Harbour Town Outlet Mall that didn't appear to be near any harbours. The Nike store had 30% off all clothes so I got another pair of running shorts and t-shirt, but no good bargains for shoes - given that both of my feet were wrecked by this stage it would have been hard to determine what a comfortable shoe felt like anymore... It was quite amusing that several other sports and surf wear stores that I went to next all had exactly 30% off their prices too, but I didn't find anything else to buy. At EB Games I did pick up a bargain, getting a new copy of Forza Horizon 2 for about $30.

Ogdenville.

So that was enough shopping, and it was back to Surfers Paradise for some lunch at Zambrero - the burrito not the nachos this time! Afterwards I grabbed a drink and some donuts and went over to the beach to give my legs a bit of a break. When finished relaxing I scouted out some options for dinner before heading back to the hotel to drop off the shopping.

The beach again.

There was a place called King Tutt's Putt Putt just across from the hotel offering three courses for $20 which seemed like a reasonable option. The courses were not bad, although only a few holes would be considered tricky. I went first on every hole which I believe gave Jason a bit of an advantage (seeing what not do do), I lost the first two courses but won the last. We got stuck behind this annoying family on the last course who took forever to play a hole, we'd wait around five minutes to let them get ahead by two or three holes, then catch up before they'd even done one more.

After golf I got in a bit of rehab at the hotel spa and sauna before heading out to dinner at the local Nando's - since pizza and mexican were already crossed off, that just left burgers to go? I then went to investigate the milk drinks at the local Coles to see if they had anything different to the boring Melbourne choices - they had a lot of Breaka flavours including banana and lime! and some other brand I forget the name of. I picked up a "limited edition" caramel brownie Breaka but it was just alright.

My hip had been getting worse all day to the point I could barely lift my leg, so I headed back to the hotel for the night and finished packing up for the morning.

A room with a view.