Weather on Saturday had been showers and very strong winds. This continued through the early evening when the rain finally let up - though the wind increased in strength! The wx forecast for Sunday (race day) was for no improvement.

However race morning dawned overcast and very windy but not wet. Luckily things improved by the start of the race and the wind had moderated somewhat which was fortunate because the first 25km is basically beach side!

Overarching comment about my performance must be that coming into this race very underdone w.r.t. muscular strength & endurance training and only moderate longer runs, I expected not to post a PB (despite this being an initial goal for the race back in Feb.)

Given that this was the case I decided before the race to see how long I could maintain a pace that I knew I couldn't hold all the way to the end just to see for how long I could maintain it and to see what I could salvage from the inevitable bodily revolt late in the race. I was curious about what system would give out first!

Very happy with race speed and pace judgment for first half of the race. 5km splits for the first 20km were 21:22 , 21:48 , 21:40 , 21:45 respectively. Of course after that point things got steadily worse!

The true disaster happened just before the northern turnaround point at 35km. 200m from the turnaround my L) hamstring cramped up! I was totally surprised!! I was feeling good (tired of course!) but I wasn't descending any hills, turning any corners - it just gave up - well, it tried to! I hobbled for a bit and then as I was recovering from that cramp, my R) calf started to cramp! Not good this far out from home and I had no choice but to slow down dramatically and run conservatively to the end. There were 3 other cramp attacks by the finish but at least I didn't have to stop.

So I guess I found out my current limiters - not enough muscular strength and / or muscular endurance, but presumably adequate leg speed. Also need to look at electrolyte intake during long strenuous events.

Banana and bottled water at finish, then a beer while wading in the ocean to cool legs down!


Training! Despite June being the 2nd largest running volume month in almost 5 years it was too little too late to be able to get a PB. Lack of muscle endurance training really killed me in the last 7 kms - i.e. hamstring and calf cramps!


Excellent race, well organised. Record numbers of participants this year (30th Anniversary of the race) with 21,000 across all the events.