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Sometimes in life, you just don’t get what you want. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you want it, sometimes it’s just not your day. Resilience is about taking those setbacks in your stride - in this case literally, although to be honest it was more shuffle than stride by the end.

I’ve always thought sport is great for building resilience - especially for kids and especially team sports. Expectations can be super-high, performance can be disastrous and there’s never really that much at stake.

You learn to succeed and to fail as a collective. You learn you can have a blinder but be on the losing side. And you can have a shocker and still be a winner. It’s a great forum in which to develop “bounce-back-ability”.

The Sydney Marathon wasn’t a team sport for me, and I’m no kid. But it’s given me a chance to practice bouncing back. Because I really did have a shocker.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the day - it definitely didn’t go to plan, but it was still a great experience. After all, this was a special, one-of-a-kind Sydney Marathon. It was the first time the race had been recognised as a World Marathon Major, joining Tokyo, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Boston.

And if the organisers had been able to order the weather on the day, I’d say they’d have asked for exactly what they got - it was picture-postcard perfect for a drop-dead gorgeous course.

Saturday had been sunny but windy. But Sunday dawned bright, clear and still. It wasn’t even that cold - around 9 degrees when the race started at 6:30am. And it didn’t get too warm, at least not by this Queenslander’s standards.

The atmosphere was amazing. There were 35,000 people running the race, and the excitement beforehand was palpable. I’d say there were plenty who were lining up for their first marathons.

There was also a huge international contingent, from all over the globe. For some reason, there seemed to be a lot of Uruguayans, which was not what I was expecting. But there were also people from pretty much every country you can think of, many of them with their national flags somewhere on their race day outfits.

What a course!

Going into the race I wasn’t really sure what to expect regarding the course. I’d seen plenty of chat saying it was hilly. But there were also plenty of people who disagreed. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

While it’s true there are no really big hills, I always felt like I was either running up or down a slope. There didn’t seem to be any genuinely flat sections. This made pacing difficult, and was hard on the body.

There is plenty to take your mind off the aches and pains though - it’s hard to imagine a city marathon course that’s more spectacular than Sydney. Just about the first thing you do is run over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is pretty special.

Then the course winds through Pyrmont, never far from the water of the harbour. There’s a fairly long, relatively nondescript section before you get to the Sydney Cricket Ground and Centennial Park.

After that it’s back through the city and around Mrs Macquarie’s chair before looping back to finish in front of the Opera House. Magic. There was also a great post-race area on the grass in the Botanical Gardens, with plenty of space to collapse and start the recovery process.

What wasn’t so fabulous was the mission to get out of the finish precinct. I was trapped on the wrong side of Macquarie Street and with few options to cross, it took me 40 minutes to extricate myself.

From there it was a beautiful ferry ride to Manly where my friends Paul and Nic looked after me with a beer and a schnitzel sanger.

So, how did I do? Well, when I started training for this race, I had hoped to break the four hour barrier. I’d run five previous marathons and had only really gotten close once - 4 hours 7 minutes at the Brisbane marathon a few years back.

That aspiration went out the window when my training went awry towards the end of July. So I decided I was going to focus on enjoying myself. At the start line I knew I was going to struggle with my hip flexors, which had given me trouble running the Sunshine Coast half at the start of the month.

I still thought I’d finish in around 4 hours 30 minutes. I wasn’t really prepared for the hip flexors to hurt literally as soon as we started, but that’s what I got. I was able to put up with this for the first 15 or so kilometres, but I really struggled from there to about the 26k mark.

I’m not sure why, but the next 10k wasn’t too bad. By the end though I was struggling to get much above a shuffle. Mind you, this is not unusual. As a back of the pack runner, I usually have plenty of company in the pain cave towards the end of these races.

Needless to say, I was very happy to cross the line. And in 26,310th place! I must admit, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, but one of my running mates Chris Zinn, who also took part, put it in perspective beautifully with this message:

Well said Chris. So I’ve picked myself up, dusted myself off, and I’ll be back out there again soon - on the trails.

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around Australia.