Sydney 2024, July 28

I slept alright before the race but like usual still woke up about once an hour. In the morning I was quite thirsty so had some drinks, but didn't eat anything before the race. Leaving the hotel at about 7:45am I had a two kilometre jog down to the start line.

It turned out that nothing much was happening when I arrived, so I could have got there ten or fifteen minutes later. They finally opened up the entrance to the starting line with about fifteen minutes to go., where there was lots of cold winds coming through while standing around.

Once we were off I started out very slow, with legs feeling quite tired and big crowds of people around, more than I expected. We had a really strong headwind and tailwind in the first few kilometres depending on the direction, even getting physically pushed forwards at times by the force. Getting towards half way we hit some narrow sections and I got slowed down a little by having people in the way.

I couldn't use my watch for lap splits as they were impacted too much by the buildings. I had some horrible splits that were slower than four minutes per kilometre, I was hoping they were substantially wrong. Into the second half I finally got moving and felt much better, actually overtaking quite a few people at last. Even running into a bit of wind I managed some splits around 3:40/km which were probably more accurate as we were close to the harbour with less buildings around.

Before the race I though I might get close to the top 100 but wasn't even in the top 150 at the end. The course was alright except for the extreme wind and a couple of narrow sections, although I don't think I would be desperate to do it every year instead of trying some other events. Also I was expecting a few hills but there wasn't much at all, which didn't help with my conservative pacing either.

After the finish line it was another two kilometre jog back to the hotel for breakfast. Checking the train schedules I had to run down to Central station for the next train to North Strathfield, and made it with less than one minute to go. Getting off the train it was a long walk of about 1.5 kilometres to the new DFO location at Homebush. Sadly I didn't find anything really worthwhile at the Adidas, Asics, Nike,  or Puma stores.

Instead of walking all the way back to the station I got a snack from the food court while waiting for the next bus to Strathfield station, then another train back to Museum station via Central which seemed to be going very slow.

Had another visit to Woolworths and Bread Top again for some food and drinks on the way back to the hotel for lunch, where it was getting even more windy in the city. During the walk I even got some flight warnings ahead of my flight departure tomorrow morning, likely due to the wind continuing.

After a good rest back at the hotel it looked like the wind had reduced a bit, so I went out for an afternoon jog through Hyde Park and Domain down to the Opera House lookout to make up a few kilometres due to the shorter run in the morning. I stopped for a few photos at various points along the way then back to the hotel for dinner and packing for the morning.