Defying common sense, while trying to prepare for my mountain bike ride through Far North Queensland in July, I decided to do some cross-training as well.  So I gave myself a target of running the in the Mini-MosMarathon 10k race on Sunday, 15 June 2008.

My weekly training plan leading up to the race consisted of the following:

1.   Come home at night from work and think about running
   

2.   Eat dinner while thinking about the fact that I should be running
   

3.   Feel too full after dinner to run
   

4.   Talk to Kelly and the kids about how my training is going
   

5.   Look at my running shoes in the bedroom as I'm climbing into bed and comment on how new they still look
   

6.   Dream about running
   

7.   Wake up and decide to run after work that evening
   

Needless to say, with this incredibly rigourous plan in place, I was set.  By race day, the farthest I had run at one time (with only two or three stops along the way) was 5k.  So when Sunday morning rolled around, I was not only physically challenged but mentally shattered at the prospect of having to keep my feet moving quickly in front of each other for what would seem like an eternity.

The sound of the starting gun sent my heart rate above my target max as I thought it would have been better if someone simply used a real gun, pointed it to my head and used the accompanying blast to send everyone else on their merry way down the course.

The course designers must have had me in mind when they set the start of the course on an incline.  They were clearly thinking, "Let's see if we can kill some unprepared soul in the first 500 metres - now that would be a first!".  I guess this explained the ambulance which was positioned at the 500 metre mark.  Despite experiencing what it must be like at the top of Mount Everest given the amount of oxygen reaching my lungs, as I passed the ambulance I thought to myself that I might actually be able to do this.

146 kilometres later (or maybe 3), I watched my friends - Marc, Ian, Tammy, George, Peter - and every other entrant - disappear into the horizon.  The Lone Ranger theme song ran through my head (even though Metallica was ringing through my iPod to try and motivate me) as I envisioned myself becoming The Lone Runner.  The good news was that if I fell down, no one would trip over me.

I then became consumed in my thoughts.  Thoughts of: puking blood, leg cramps causing distortions previously thought impossible, stopping, damn hills, man this hill sucks, I hope to God there isn't another hill coming up, I'm going to miss my family and I shouldn't have eaten that for breakfast.  Amazingly enough, these thoughts occupied me long enough to tick over another 5k as I crossed the 8km mark.  By this time, I really thought I could do it.  I tried to lift my left arm so I could check my time, but either my arm didn't work or I was blind from lack of oxygen.  Either way, I had no idea how I was tracking and decided to simply keep running.

The last laugh was again on the course designers.  The last 2k was almost exclusively up hill.  One of the course marshals and a friend of mine, Katherine, later commented that I looked like I was re-enacting a scene from The Matrix with my stop-motion movement as I crawled passed her towards the finish.

With the finish line in sight, I really picked up the pace - easily matching the burst attack speed of a long-neck turtle - crossing over at 56 minutes, 25 seconds.

My mind was awash with thoughts of pride, accomplishment and surprisingly minimal pain.  I did it.  I did it.  And I don't think I'll do it again.