Sydney Morning Herald 1/2

Yesterday was the Sydney Morning Herald half marathon and it couldn't have been a more picture perfect day.

The sun was shining and it was cool, but not cold. Our biggest gaffe of the morning was convincing ourselves that the race began at 7am - not a half an hour later. So we set our alarms for 5am and dashed for the 5:45am train to Martin Place.

We arrived at about 6am to find that we were among the first on site. At least there were no lines for anything!

As for the race, neither of us were expecting much in terms of a performance simply because we haven't been doing any real speed work, in particular Margreet who completed the Canberra marathon a month ago.

Based on her year-earlier run though, Margreet had secured a coveted preferred number and was among the top 200 runners at the start. I wasn't far behind - a lesson we had learned the hard way in 2006. So many people who aren't going to run fast continue to line up right at the start line in running races.

In any event, I managed an unofficial 1:31:42 and Margreet 1:36. We were both three to four minutes off from the times we'd hoped to achieve. Both of us suffered at about the same time, near the 14km mark.

I simply ran out of energy. Margreet was forced to walk with a stitch.

At the end of the day though, it was a good hit out. This week we both start to significantly increase our running volume - the Gold Coast Marathon is fast approaching.