Karen writes: After another Marathon

I have been jittering all over the place since the marathon just over 2 days ago.  Half the time I dont know whether I want to lie down and stare at the inside of my eyelids, or run madly up and down the street. Physically I feel really good, nothing hurts and I am getting around as normal (some would say I obviously don't work hard enough), it is just a feeling of being in a bit of a strange state that only time and keeping moving can deal with.  The only real evidence is that I am ferociously hungry, eat too much, then cant stand the thought of food until the hungries arrive again.  If I listed today's food intake it would be unbalanced and sound bizarre, I mean the sort of stuff we have in the fridge tells a story...like cheese (3 varieties), guacamole, quince paste, and fruit.  Much of it goes together strangely well on a bagel at 5am.  This will pass, I know.

Today I have walked and walked and thought and walked some more.   I thought about what I liked about the Sunshine Coast inaugural marathon, and the list goes something like this...

• beautiful beautiful beautiful start with the ocean right there and the sun coming up in a glorious orange ball
• accommodation just over the road from the start line
• it is so cool to be part of the 'first' of something, long may this one continue...will we ever have a chance to come back is a question
• only one hill, I do like hills but I haven't been training on them for months because of that ITB injury
• volunteers were all absolutely lovely in their yellow shirts. They laughed at the jokes they must have heard a 1000 times ("you again?"). I did get mildly miffed when I came up to one drink station and a man said to someone else something like, "real runners have their hand out waiting for their liquids as they run through".  I thought, 'real runner, hey, I'M a real runner'
• easily accessible drink and food at the end and a finishing chute which made you keep your legs moving
• late checkout from the hotel
• no litter on the road like at Perth last year.
• the "go marathoner" cheers from supporters
• the fact that there were so few kiwi's in the field, it is almost certain we were in the first few kiwi's over the finish line...now that is a rarity!
• lovely rectangular medal, very colourful.

What I liked less (whinging kiwi)...

• the electrolyte drinks supplied on course were not available in NZ so couldn't test them out (this is one rule I do strictly follow...NO new nutrition on the day)
• the setup where the shorter distance runners joined the marathon runners was scary and I felt a bit jostled and at risk because my tired legs weren't as agile as they might have been if I needed them to get me out of trouble.

Things I'm not sure about...

• a 4 lap course, I thought it would be hard running past the same spot so many times but it wasn't bad at all, partly because I didn't know where I was half the time anyway.  Do I like it better than a straight out and back or a single circuit, not sure.
• the heat.  We did our training in an Auckland winter and survived a marathon in the Australian heat, not sure if that's a smart thing to do again any time soon but certainly learned lots from the experience, it definitely wasn't as bad as expected.

Would I recommend this marathon to anyone else?  OH YES!

I said this last year at the same time.  It is still the truth, the next marathon we do WILL be part of Ironman.