Wagga Trail Marathon : 33.38.34 @ 5.12

I had some teaching to do on Saturday and so I couldn't leave Sydney until 3.30 pm. I decided to drive. It was picturesque in the late afternoon in the Southern Highland with the yellow wattle in full bloom. It was made even more spectacular by the yellowing light of the setting sun from the west and dark storm clouds to the west.

I arrived at Wagga at 8.00 am and was staying at what was previously the Wagga Gentleman's Club build in the 1880's. It maintains a lot of the characteristics and charm from that era.

The marathon started late ? at 8.00am with the temp below zero. Where I was staying was a 2 minutes walk to the start at 'Wagga Beach' on the river. The river looked very much like beach with very little water at this part with lots of sand.

A pleasant but tough course with trail running, roads, steep long hills, short sharp hills and a whole lot of other types of terrain. I had no idea about the course and so just ran alone and was steady. The biggest climb between 10 - 15 k was tough and I was not sure if more was to come.

I just kept it as steady as I could but because of the changing terrain that was difficult. Made halfway in about 1.48. I then started to struggle and was dropping back to past 5.30ks from halfway to about 30k. At 30k we come into a residential area. I was told that most of the run home would now be on roads and bike paths. Now that sound more like my style - black with a white dotted line down the middle. I then manged to pick the pace got home in 3.38 for a second half split of about 1.50.

Not a flat course and very challenging and varied.

The ankle was just painful and restricted my running all morning. But it got no worse than when I started the marathon.

A steady week with 122k's of running.