Brisbane Road Runners - Relay

Disappointment, Excitement, Anxiety, Concern, Elation....had it all today.

Dragged Allan (hubby) and Matt (13yo) out to the Road Runners at 5.30am this morning. It was a 21km run with 3 team members each completing a lap of 7km.
I was really excited about having a 'Family Team' until we got there and found out you have to give your 10km times and they allocate you to a team to even out so all teams are due in around the same time.

Shock horror. The look on my sons' face when I told him he would have to run with two strangers :) If I wasn't so disappointed to not be running as a family I would have laughed at his face!!!
I had planned to go out first, then run with Matt for the second loop and Allan would bring it home. Now we were all on different teams. After finding our new team mates I realised it wasn't so bad after all, mainly because I would still be able to run with Matt - who was now doing the third leg for his new team - as I was doing the second leg for our team.

Guess who was in my team??? Fellow CR Runnerbee and none other than the wonderful Jackie Fairweather (Gallagher). Jackie was after a run with other people before heading off to Tokyo for a marathon - hoping to do 2:30 finally for prep for Commonwealth Games. It was very exciting only now my non-serious family run was turning into 'shit claire you better run fast today' type run.

Jackie went out first, quite easily for her - doing 3.40 min kms. She came in second overall and tagged me and off I went - soon to be overtaken by Jackie who was doing the whole 21km with the team - I kept her in sight for about 2km then had to drop back. I managed to do 4:30km most of the way but the 4-5 km was very hard heading towards Southbank.
Finished up my lap with our team now leading by 30 sec. I tagged Brenda who was next/last out and grabbed some water before seeing my sons second team mate come in and tag him.

It was so much fun running with Matty. He was giving it all he had but was doing it tough. In the last km he was wobbling all over and said he was feeling sick. I told him I loved him more that this race was worth and suggested he walk. Nope. Stubborn child. Pushed on and even sprinted at the end. So proud of him I was.
He had overtaken my team and brought his team home in good time.

One of the highlights of the day was when Brenda crossed the line. She was very upset and said "I lost it for us, Im sorry" Jackie immediately went up to her and scolded her. She said 'it is not about winning but about doing your best'. Incidentally Brenda ran her fastest 7km PB time ever today. *cheers* I was so proud of her and very thankful for Jackies praise of her efforts - it really meant a lot coming from an elite runner.

We hung around and watched Allan come in. He did very well too. Flashandy was on his team doing the initial leg and had run first in a time of 25mins (and something sec) so very fast!!!! However their second runner was a bit slower and they fell back on the placings.

All in all it was a good day and lots of fun to mix everyone up like that.

Matty even won the random draw prize. How funny. He had a choice to choose between a water bottle or an envelope. He took the envelope and got a $50 voucher for Run on Down. *claps*

Time to get serious now...3km Time Trial on Tuesday followed by the final Club Championship race on Sunday - 5km. So lots of speed this week.