I’ve been building my kilometres and fitness with the ultimate goal of the year being Chicago marathon in October. But along the way I had a 10km and two half marathons to complete.

On the 8th July I completed my local parkrun as the tail walker then headed straight to the airport to head for Sydney and the Sydney Harbour 10km. I attended this event last year and it wasn’t my best 10km run. Calf cramps struck at about 8km and I staggered the last 2km.

On arrival in Sydney I headed to the start line to grab my bib, I then spent a few hours wandering around Sydney. I was actually a bit worried about this as with the stairs, hills and bridge my legs were feeling fatigued the day before the run. I grabbed dinner, headed to my hotel and relaxed for the night.

This year the run started an hour later, but the forecast was for a cool morning so no crazy warm Sydney winter day.

The run went well, no cramps, great location. A 10km run is an odd distance, It’s not a quick 5km sprint, but it’s also not close to a half marathon. By 7 km my legs were feeling it, I was pushing but it felt like I was getting slower, I didn’t want to check my Garmin to see how much my pace had dropped off. I just kept pushing and gave it everything in the last km.

I finished with a time of 52:18, a new 10km PB by a minute. Colour me happy.
Turns out the last 3km were the fastest with a 4:22, 5:02 & 4:39.

The next three weeks were hell. Within days of getting back to Melbourne I had a cold, just as it was clearing I gave some family a lift to the airport, they all had colds, guess what? Two days later I had another cold!

I lost 14 days of training due to the double cold, probably a bit more as even when I could run again it wasn’t pretty. With Run Melbourne half now just over a week away I wasn’t very confident of my sub 2 hour goal. I’d missed my last long run and numerous other sessions whilst ill. Oh well, we’ll see what happens on the day.