First off, let me congratulate Michael Shelley on an absolutely fantastic result. A silver medal at his first Commonwealths is awesome and I am so happy for him. As I have said in a few interviews previously, the marathon is an event where the form book goes out the window. It's rare that the favourite wins, and the race on Thursday was no exception. Michael ran terrific, came through the field over the closing stages and I'm sure he will walk away from the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games a very happy man. I also offer my congratulations to Lisa Weightman on her Bronze medal in the womens race. Marty Dent ran on in the second half well to place 6th.
On to my recap....
I felt great for the race. Those of you who watched it may have noticed that I was near the front through about 10km. It felt so very comfortable, even though we had picked it up from a pedestrian 17min first 5km split to a respectable 15:40-odd second 5km split. When we hit the 10km drink station, the lead group surged the same as they had at the 5km drink station. I ignored the surge again and maintained my 3:10-3:15/km pace, assuring myself I would again catch up to them like I did the first time. Well, I hit 15km, I still hadn't caught them, and was now down by about 30 seconds. I'd ran that 5km stretch in 15:50, so I hadn't really slowed down, they just sped up. I was still feeling great, even though I was on my own.
18km is where it began to get interesting. I felt a stitch coming on but managed to fight it off quickly with some deep breaths, however I didn't realize that my race was coming to an end over the next 2km. I thought maybe I just got lazy and dropped pace so I tried to pick it back up. Strangely, my legs felt pretty heavy. In the 19th kilometre, Michael Shelley caught me and then dropped me pretty quickly. I could do nothing about it. Having problems like that so early in the race was very strange, and unexpected. It's not like I was running world record pace and blew up, I was only on 2:14/2:15 pace. Every kilometre from then on got harder and harder and harder and harder. By the time I had reached 25km, several people had passed me, and I was just trying to nurse my body to the finish line. The 5km splits I picked up on my watch were: 17:05, 15:44, 15:53, 16:19, 16:57, 17:28, 18:08, 18:51, 8:40 (2.195km). As you can see, it got extremely slow towards the end.
I have now experienced the best and worst that a marathon has to offer. I think that this has made me a stronger athlete, and will prepare me for what I will face in the future. I came in with a lot of expectation for myself, but experienced the unfortunate "off-day" that can rear its head when you least expect it. I'm not going to dwell on what happened because what's done is done. I will bounce back and do my best to ensure that my next marathon outing is much more memorable.
After all, I was able to race in an Australian singlet at the Commonwealth Games. While I may not have performed as well as I had hoped, the ability to represent this great country, carrying the hopes of Australia has made me very proud to be Australian. I have no doubt that I will win a Commonwealth Games medal, I will just have to wait another 4 years before I get my next chance. For now, I will have a couple of weeks off, get married and get back into training for 2011 and a shot at World Champs.
Thanks to everyone that has supported me thus far. Please see a list of all of my sponsors and supporters here.
We still have a long road ahead before I reach my potential. I look forward to seeing what the future holds.
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