Bridge to Brisbane 2011 - 13th 34m07

I made it to the start line - Just!
That's me first left in Government Tee Shirt and Cap!


Bridge to Brisbane 2011 by brizzygooner at Garmin Connect - Details




10KM  13th  34m07.


I left the house at 4.45am which was plenty of time to get to the race start the other side of the bridge for a 6.10am start a journey time of approx 30mins. I get to the slip road off the Gateway at 5.20am and sit in not unexpected race traffic. Still got plenty of time but I did not expect to just sit there going  no where for 40mins!
I cant understand how the police did not control the traffic flow better! Eventually park the car at 6.00am ! I have 10mins to get to the start about 1.5km away. The Bridge to Brisbane is a massive community event with thousands of runners taking part and I was thinking perhaps they'll delay the start because of all the traffic problems but it appears only people from the North side might have been affected and the organisers were probably oblivious! I start running through the throngs of people to get to the start line. Easier said than done when there are 30,000+ runners! Take a detour down a slip road and then have to climb over a wobbly 1.2m chain link  fence. I have just noticed a bruised thumb that I can only attribute to my less than athletic clamber!
Got to the Elite Runners start line and push through to the tape with a minute to spare. My mouth was seriously dry, like never before even though I had had two cups of tea since waking at 4.00am. 
The gun goes and perhaps because there is a division between the elites and the next set of runners things are quite conservative. It might also have been that the 1st KM is all uphill ( Sir Leo Hielscher Bridge  spans the Brisbane river and is 2km in length. I notice 3 or 4 Africans (Tanzanians?) who have been absent from the B2B for a couple of years and Jackson Elliott (winner at Gladstone and Peter Nowell the two local favourites.
So I start to settle into things when we finally start to run downhill and am running in a group of runners that I always seem to run with during these races. Saw the guy who finished 3rd at Gladstone and stuck close to him in a group till 5km. The lead pack (8 ?) had gone out of site, then there was a 2nd pack or 6 or 7 runners then my group of 6 or 7 runners. I noticed the Garmin was in accordance with the Race KM's up till 5th KM when the road KM's went about 100m past the Garmin KM alerts. The pace felt fast and I was at a 100%.
After 5km our group fragmented and inevitably I got isolated and ran the last 5km pretty much by myself though one guy was just out of reach about 4 secs up on me. The 9th KM goes into an  underpass (tunnel) and I wonder if the Garmin loses signal for about 100m. Running uphill from the underpass and further up over an overpass makes for a real struggle and the Garmin recorded it as 3m45 for that KM !! Not sure about that and maybe the tunnel does affect readings as at the finish the Garmin came back to near spot on the same as the Race KM's. I pushed' hard as' over the last KM  though as a general rule there is absolutely no movement in race  place from 5km's to 10km. However, someone might have been creeping up on me as I started to notice the clapping and cheering as you go past spectators and how they tend to give special attention to the first female! As I rounded the final corner in the Showgrounds the announcer called "here is the first female - Cassandra (Cassie) Fien! I couldn't let the 'being Chicked' thing happen again though I must resign myself to that happening more and more in the future! 
Crossed the line and waited a second or two then stopped my watch on 34m09. Disappointed about the time but happy I didn't get beaten by Cassie and I have a good chance of making the top 20 so two out of three aint bad ....
It will be interesting to compare times of other runners but I was about 30secs up on last year. 
Results come out tomorrow.