Adelaide 2016, August 14 (Hurt)

I only entered in the shorter 10km event at the Adelaide Marathon festival due to never ending injuries, even that was doubtful but I thought I'd give it a go, although I was only 50-50 about participating up until the day of the event. Jason was running in the half marathon which started at 8:00am but the 10km wasn't until 10:10am, which is very late for a race start.

I walked from the hotel to Adelaide Oval again for the start of the race, and found Jason just as he was finishing his race already. At the beginning of my event I tried to jog the first 500 metres at 6:00/km pace but didn't feel great so I slowed down to 7:00/km, then sadly that become a fast walk soon after, the hamstring injury was still too painful to take any more impact. It was very depressing not being able to run, now I was just hoping to not finish last.

After about four kilometres I had warmed up a bit and managed to get back into a jogging motion at around 7:00/km pace again, and actually overtook a small number of people - some of them might have broken down during the marathon or half marathon though. My right quad was now killing in addition to the right hamstring soreness I'd had for the past month, but more worrying was the left shin stress which took five months to heal last time.

I finished in just under 72:30 or 7:15/km, position 382 of 429 which was of course my worst result ever - I might have come in right around 10th place if healthy. I found Jason again at the finish and went back to the hotel, then to a local pizza place that was open for lunch, it was surprisingly good despite being cheap.

The finish at last.

After lunch we got the free city connector bus to South Terrace in the city - I though for sure being on a bus *and* in Adelaide I would run into Matt but he never showed up. I walked over to the Himeji Gardens for a look, it was extremely small such that you could walk around it in a minute or two, the big sand pit thing was alright I suppose.

Himeji.

A free tram back to Victoria Square next, but the Adelaide Central market was closed on a Sunday - which market wouldn't be open on a Sunday. There was a Bread Top nearby but it had all the same stuff as the Victorian stores, disappointing. A couple of stops further along the tram route and we were at the famous Rundle Mall. It's probably longer than Bourke Street and it has a few more arcades and shopping centres alongside it, but it was generally the same kind of stores. The only purchases I made were an Adelaide magnet at the souvenir store and a new resistance band from the sports store.

Back out of the city again where Uni SA had their annual day. Since it was late in the afternoon already I didn't even managed to score any free stuff! They did have a free simulation tour of a dental surgery, but who would want to do that. After a quick tour along the River Torrens my legs were dead, so we got a free bus back to O'Connell Street in North Adelaide for some food for dinner then another bus back to the hotel.

Karrawirra Parri.

Since we had an early start in the morning the evening was just watching Olympics highlights on TV, the 1.5gb free wifi had almost run out too and I hadn't even installed all of the latest Windows updates on my laptop yet!

Use the forks.