The start time was later than usual for these races, so only had to get a train into Flinders Street by 8:30am. I was able to enter in the priority start so no problems having to get in line early, instead ran a couple of kilometres to warm up but was feeling quite tired like usual on race day.
I got to line up about third row from the front, I think there was some race ambassadors walking around, the only one I recognised was that Rob Mills guy. A few good athletes I noticed at the front too, but not a really deep field.
We started on time which was good, I was immediately overtaken by a crowd of people going way too hard up the first hill towards The Tan. As we started down to Domain Road all these people started to slow down already, not even one kilometre in, so I got a bit stuck without any space to overtake.
I ran a bit too fast up Domain Road and down the Anderson Street hill to make up a bit of time, so was hurting a bit after that, but made up a lot of places at least. Not much music on the course that I noticed, just one girl singing Gnarls Barkley Crazy was not bad.
Since I've run around this area a lot I knew what most of the course was like, so managed to take it a bit easier and recover going around The Tan, Swan Street Bridge and Batman Avenue. As we went around St Kilda at about 4.5 kilometres the last group were still walking towards the front, and hadn't even started yet!
I knew there was another hill section coming up after 6 kilometres which soon arrived as we had to cross over the train lines to get to the MCG. I mistakenly thought that bridge was the final hill, but actually a much tougher one was still ahead going up towards Jolimont Station where I almost went into meltdown. I lost about 20 seconds on my kilometre split but it seems like everyone else did about the same.
I was hurting a lot after this hill section and wasn't sure if I could keep going at the same speed, it probably took about a kilometre to finally feel good again. Going up Brunton Avenue and Wellington Parade was actually no problem at all afterwards, and managed to finish with a fast final kilometre.
The final time was 38:47 which was a bit slower than the same event in 2014 but I think this course was harder. At the finish line they usually hand out something useful like a protein bar or fruit, but this time it was kettle chips...
There wasn't too much to look at near the finish line so I went for a cool down 3.5 kilometres around The Tan and over to Richmond Station.
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