St Clair Half Marathon

I stumbled onto this site about 6 months ago and thought what a cool thing to do. It is a 21km walk/run through the vineyards in Blenheim/Marlborough on Saturday 12th May 2007. Totally cross country with stop banks to climb up, swamps to walk through, fences to climb and a creek to cross. I challenged my step sister to do this with me just before Xmas and she was so keen that she went on line and paid for her spot almost immediately. Sadly by the time I went to pay for mine they had all sold out. Only 200 people were able to do this one. Anyhow, Gina kindly gave me her entry as my birthday present so I was able to go.

Two days prior to this it poured with rain and had become really cold. So far in all my events I have been really lucky and have not yet done one in the rain. I really thought this was going to be my first. We drove over from Nelson on the day and thankfully it was a clear sky.....well it was 7am so couldn't see past the fog really.

The walkers were to head off first with the runners starting off an hour later. With the grass full of dew we were off.

I led out for the first 200 m then this guy just blasted past me like I was ambling like a snail. I figured it was not worth it trying to keep up with him as I have never walked 21km before and new it was going to be tough. My toes were frozen and I wished I had worn better socks. I kept thinking that if they didnt stop hurting I was not going to be able to finish. (The joy of inheriting gammy toes as the long toe hits the end of my shoes and really hurts)

One thing that really annoyed me was an older lady that was running started out with us and she ran beside me for almost quarter of it then she caught up with the guy in front of me and run behind him. (I notice that they still have her time in the walkers results!!!)

The cloud lifted and like a very typical Blenheim day. It became hot. I had dressed for a cold day so found the heat hard.

I found it really odd with this event as the guy out in front had such a lead on me that once past the 8km mark I hardly ever saw him at all and behind me was the same. I could no longer see anyone behind me. So I found it hard to keep pushing myself to keep going quickly and I was so afraid I would get lost. They said to follow the blue pack strapping that was on the ground but when you pop out from the vineyard row you are not sure of which row you should head down again. So I felt a little disorientated at times.

I think the hardest part of the race was the last 5km. It really breaks you. Your body hurts, your feet are killing you and you just want to stop. (luckily I had been warned of this by a lady I raced against the weekend before and I took her advice and had lots of carb drinks in my pocket.)

Climbing the fence was extremely hard as there was only 2 km to go and to lift your legs up to climb on a wine barrel was actually alot harder than I thought. My legs just didn't want to bend up that far nor push my weight through so I grabbed the fence and dragged myself over.

I saw the finish line and was so thrilled that I had at least finished. I had made a guess of what time I wanted to do it in........the weekend before I walked the Nelson Half Marathon and did the 10km walk in 1hour 13min..... so I thought I was really pushing it but would like to finish at 2hours 30min. My official time was 2 hours 29min. How cool is that. I got my picture in the paper too. All finishers got a bottle of St Clairs wine, what I didn't know was that all the first place winners got a Magnum of it. So when I crossed the line and got my hand shook and the bottle thrust at me I looked down and saw the size of and instantly thought "oh YEAH" and that's when they took my photo. So yes I had a huge grin on my face.

The next problem was the reporting in the paper about the event. They put the caption under my photo correct but in the results listed me as a man!!! last time I checked I was still a girlie. So I contacted the paper and they were most sorry so said they would correct it. Which I must say they did but with the correction they printed my time wrong. They gave me the time of the second place getter. lol .............. You just cant get good journalism can you.