Race: Townsville Half Marathon
Location: The Strand, Townsville
Date: 4th August 2013

I travelled to south to Townsville over the weekend for the 2013 Townsville Running Festival. 2011 was my last race at this event in the Half Marathon where I placed 2nd in 1:15:29. This was my 21.1km PB ever since and I was out to beat that time on Sunday.

477 runners lined up in the Half Marathon with some top quality athletes such as Darren Peacock from Darwin, Simon O’regan from Townsville whom had not lost a race this year, and Jarrod Owen who took the honours in 2012. The goal was to break 1h:10m and from the gun I led the race feeling strong, fresh and fit. I controlled the race and had a good lead for the first 8km until a giant blood blister formed on my foot which quickly spread to the toes. This slowed things down and I was forced to alter my technique to help push on.

Darren, Simon and Jarrod quickly caught me and for the next 4kms we ran together in a pack. Darren and I made a bit of a breakaway after the final turnaround point to mark 8km’s to go. The pace picked up and a fatal drink station error on my behalf gave Darren the perfect opportunity to kick on and open a commanding lead which he was strong enough to hold on for a race win. I managed to hold strong and push through the pain of the blister which finally burst with a couple of kilometres to go, finishing in 2nd place overall and 1st in my age category in a new PB of 1:15:12, just 34 seconds behind Darren. Simon and Jarrod finished 3rd and 4th respectively.

It was a very tough race, hot conditions and some high quality runners made for a flat out hard race.

Organisers and volunteers are definitely to be commended for what was an amazing festival and I look forward now to 5 more weeks of training leading into my main race of the season, Ironman 70.3 World Championships on 8th September in Las Vegas.

A massive thank you goes out to my amazing sponsors, my incredible coach Dr Trevor Chetcuti, my supportive family and friends, fans, followers and my beautiful girls Renee and Summer for making the trip down to support me.