At 6.00am David along with 1,000 runners of all shapes and sizes gathered at Esplanade Park (opp Bell Tower) for the City to Surf marathon. Despite warnings of rain later in the day Sunday morning was quite mild and promised a lovely day.
At 6.20pm runners were directed 200mtres up a short street to the start line on St Georges Terrace. There they took off in the dark towards the causeway to turn and run back along the river out to the University of WA and back again.
The flat course made the first half very comfortable. The hills at the 20kms mark changed everything and David’s comfortable 5 minute per km pace slowed dramatically to 8-9kms going up Malcolm Street and the hills in Kings Park.
The hills put such a strain on David’s arms that his forearms are now very sore. Fortunately the cramping he suffered badly with at Bunbury weren’t anywhere near as bad which is surprising. For onlookers like me and David’s brother Bob, the 22c temperature was perfect but for runners it was hot. Many coming into the finish exhausted and ready to collapse.
Fortunately for David his earlier stomach problems didn’t affect him as much as was expected and he ended up running the course in a fantastic 4hrs 25minutes.
The Kenyan’s on the other hand took all the major prizes with the first male ( Chelimo Kipkemboi ) in at 2hrs 14 minutes and the first female (Ethiopian) in 2hrs 35minutes.
Overall there were 40,000 runners in the event
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