North Shore Marathon
I ran in the inaugural North Shore marathon on Sunday. This was marathon number 7 for me (8 if you include the Ultra).
The weather appeared to be quite perfect on the drive to the start as there was a thick fog blanketing Auckland. Unfortunately it burnt off reasonably quickly and we had the hottest day of the winter for most of the marathon.
The marathon course was two loops of the half marathon course and I found it pretty tough. Most of the course was undulating with a particularly nasty hill climb up North Head which is a small steep volcano cone. I found going up that really drained all energy 
and enthusiasm and the slippery grass coming down was rather treacherous. Other than that it wasn’t too bad. Lots of scenic views and the last km of each loop along the beach was pretty if not always firm underfoot.
I hit the first half bang on my target of about 2 hours. The plan had been to do a negative split but my dreams of maintaining that hit reality pretty quickly into the second loop.
I personally think I was undertrained for this marathon as my last long run was in mid June as I spent most of July wrestling with a chest lurgy. The second loop took about 2:48 which involved a fair bit of run/walking towards the end.
Overall a disappointing time but on the day I was just happy to finish. I finished 25th in my age group and 81st overall.
It was great to see fellow daily miler Danilo out on the course. He snapped the photo! I ran the first half with my running buddy Peter who did an outstanding PB of 4:03:00.
8 and a half weeks to the Auckland Marathon!
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