Launceston 2023, June 11

Got up at 8:00am to watch the half marathon live stream. It was still only 9:30am once that was over,  and another hour before the 10km race still. I'd had enough waiting around so left for the race around 10:00am, it was only about 1.5 kilometres directly from the hotel so jogged a bit extra to finish warmup.

Started to line up for the start at 10:20am, close enough to the front, but we still had to wait for some 8:00am half marathon finishers to come through so started a bit late. Started off a bit too fast by the time I checked my watch I saw it was under 3:30/km after 500 metres, so eased off a bit.

There was a minor uphill into a light wind for the first half, but no rain. I never really found a pack to run in on the way out, the groups always seemed to slow down when I tried to settle in, so had to overtake soon. The conditions were a bit easier on the way back, but started to get hard from about 7 kilometres. I managed to maintain almost identical speeds for each kilometre for a 35:40 finish, somehow only just inside the top 100 of 550, shows that a lot of fast runners turned up.

The final distance was a bit over 10 kilometre so I should have tried to take the shortest path and might have saved 5-10 seconds. Jogged for another 3km to get back to the hotel but I was definitely ready to take off the Nike Vaporfly race shoes by that time, they are quite tight and narrow.

I watched a replay of the 10km live stream and had lunch back at the hotel. Both live streams were good because there was a lead pack in the men's race until the end, although the women's were not so close.

Walk down to Cataract Gorge in the afternoon, had a right hamstring that was a bit sore so only did the shorter route, no hill climbs. Back through the city to the hotel again, even more quiet on a Sunday afternoon.

I made an uber reservation for the morning trip to the airport, never used that feature before. Actually my registered credit card linked to my account had expired in 2020 which shows when I was last using the service.

Went out again to City Park, just north of the city centre. It was a good size for the location, and even had a random monkey exhibit, they all kept walking around the enclosure in circles and never stopped moving.

That was it for the day, finished with another AFL game for the evening, Carlton lost of course.