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Christchurch Marathon 2008 Photos

Posted June 5th, 2008 in Running

This post has photos from me running the SBS Christchurch Marathon 2008. I'm sure my regular LAMP readers don't want to see yet another off-topic running post so rest assured there will be a second on-topic post today about MySQL using "group by" and "having" ... For everyone else (read family and friends), read on...

Here I am in the first photo running alongside the Avon. It was cold so I was wearing a thermal top under the running shirt and thermal pants under my shorts. I started off wearing a beanie but I handed it off to Jane at the half way point because I was too hot. In this photo I hadn't got rid of the gloves yet because it was still too cold but I had to roll the sleeves of the thermal top up to let some heat out. I can't quite get over how grey my hair looks in this photo...

This cheesy photo was taken somewhere around kilometer 39 or 40 in Hagley Park when I was hurting and wondering what on earth I was doing running a marathon. Ces was riding alongside me and told me to smile for the camera hence the cheese. This is the only photo when I knew I was being snapped. I'd passed the gloves off to Ces before we got to the park but I had to roll the sleeves back down again otherwise I would have been too cold. Ces made some wisecrack about making sure I looked good for the cameras at the end when I rolled them down.

The next one is coming out of Hagley Park. It's somewhere like 41.4 km into the Marathon. I'd finally got passed the 41 kilometer mark which had seemed such a long time coming and despite how I look in this photo I wasn't actually feeling too bad. At the 41km mark I said to Ces "right" and actually managed to pick the pace up a bit. That white arm in the left of the photo belongs to Ces - he rode a bike alongside me for probably the last 15km (as well as at various other parts of the course) and offered some excellent support in those last hard few kilometers. Of course I really wanted to tell him to eff off but I knew what he was saying was right and I thank him for it all.

I look much happier in the next photo as I "sprint" towards the finish line. 

And I think I must be just about crossing the line in this last photo. Very emotional finish!

And that's it!