City To Surf - 72 years waiting to race

A special event - the streets were closed and 50,000 people joined dad to celebrate his birthday.

Well we did it! The weather was perfect and Dad was up for the challenge!

After a shaky start last week when I found out my friend hadn’t actually entered us in the race, I sent out feelers to see if anyone could help and on Saturday I got us 2 numbers – so Dad was Spyridouca and I was Deborah– nevermind! We had the numbers and we were in the race.

I baked us some Bill’s Banana Choc Chip bread (which has become the traditional food of walkers over here - we had some on our 22km walk last October when Joan was visiting), we joined the SOUL "back of the pack” crowd for the start and while we were waiting to start we heard that the winner had finished, in around 41 minutes. 2 minutes later we crossed the start and we were off and racing!

1/2 way 7km

We paced at around 12 minute kilometers and even though we had walked heartbreak hill before I think the preceding 5km might have been a little too much of a warm up and dad was starting to feel it in his ankle, we stopped for a breather and then pushed on downhill to Bondi.

The last kilometer is always the hardest and we were both delighted to see the finish line.

We had taken 3 hours and 2 minutes to finish – not a bad effort! (this was our timing on our watches the official time will vary as they give all the Back of the Pack 20 minutes off for their delayed start when in fact it took us 40 minutes to get to the start line!)

The oldest man who was a first time entrant was 87 – so since dad wasn’t registered as having done the race he could still take out the record in years to come!!!

Smiling through the pain! It's over.

Just because Dad likes numbers and co-incidences and we had 3 hours of conversation to cover we realized that in 2000 when I did the race on my birthday I turned 27! In 2007 when Dad did the race on his birthday he turned 72! It was all about the 7’s and 2’s today.

The Rockports performed beautifully and Dad’s delighted with them. I’ve checked in with him tonight, he’s been snoozing since I dropped him home and I’m sure he’ll have a great sleep tonight, I nearly wore him out but as you all know he’s got quite a few more years in him yet.

Clipping from the website: Well done Deborah on completing the 2007 Sun-Herald City2Surf. You were 50729th over the line with a time of 203:08.
Well done Spyridouca on completing the 2007 Sun-Herald City2Surf. You were 50730th over the line with a time of 203:09.

PS - Since the race dad has discovered that the discomfort in his ankle was actually gout, such a shame because otherwise he would have done the walk easy. Anyway it's something that can be managed, it's not caused by alcohol as dad has given up drinking so he's already talking about doing it again next year!!

PPS - I'll update the Queen story over the weekend.