the ultra

So... what have I been doing in Australia? Well, with the help of my fabulous support crew (Naomi) I ran my first ultra marathon! 55 long kilometres from Frankston to Portsea in Victoria. The day before the race we enjoyed blue skies and sunshine.... but the weather turned ugly in the early hours of the morning on race day. Heavy rain. Strong winds. Cold. I was scared!

It was raining at 5:30am when I woke up to eat breakfast in the dark under the warm bed covers (McDonalds blueberry muffin & half a cup of coffee- fyi). It was still raining when I dragged the blankets off and got changed into my running clothes at 6am. The rain continued as I told Naomi, "I can't do this! It's too cold. I'm from Cambodia...I don't train in freezing rain and headwinds!". But by 7am the rain had stopped. Race time. The above pic is me taking it easy in the first hour...

At about the 25k mark we ran through a hail storm! I'm not kidding you! Sleeveless top, running shorts and ice? Brutal. As I ran I couldn't help but cry out aloud, "ouch, ouch, ouch!" as the hail stones smashed my shoulders, arms, legs, face... Seriously?! As if running 55k isn't hard enough in itself! I had a few lonely moments when it felt I was running the Nepean Hwy solo... but there was almost always someone within sight and Naomi met me every half hour or so to top up my Gatorade bottle.

Happy to be back at the car putting on some warm clothes! I was stoked to find out that I was 38 out of 58 finishers and 7th out of 14 female runners. (Don't need to finish first to have a smile like this!)