Many years ago, Matt and I said that one day we’d visit Australia. A combination of factors meant that 2019 would finally be our year to visit – friends in Canberra encouraging us to go over, us both celebrating special birthdays etc and our trip was booked.
After booking our holiday, I then found out I’d got a place in the London Marathon for Dementia Revolution and with the flights we’d already booked, we’d be landing home only six days before the marathon. I became slightly concerned over training, before I realised I would be on taper time, and then about jet lag, of which there wasn’t much I could do.
My plan was to use hotel gyms whilst in Australia, but the reality was we were doing lots of walking each day and I decided not to. A couple of training highlights however were my first time in a saltwater pool in Sydney, and Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas.
I’m not sure I’ve swam in a 50m pool before let alone a saltwater one, and it was on Mrs Macquarie’s Point, overlooking one of Sydney’s bays. The gym pool I’ve used for training is only 20m so it felt very different swimming 2.5 times the distance before it was time to turn around and head back for each length!
From Sydney we headed to Queensland for several days, and one of the places we stayed was Port Douglas. Port Douglas is famous for many things including Four Mile Beach, and I decided to use it for a training run. I set an early alarm to try and avoid some of the heat but the reality was I was out before 9 (I hit snooze a few times…) and it was still 27 degrees. I decided just to do 5km, as it was too warm for me.
We then spent time in Melbourne (no training!) before staying with friends in Canberra. Whilst there, we drove out to Mount Kosciuszko National Park. We got the chairlift in Thredbo, and then did the 13km return walk to the top of Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain at 2,228m. It was a good walk (although I was slightly surprised that you could feel the altitude) and some more miles in my legs before the marathon.
If you’d like to sponsor me for the London Landmarks Half Marathon and the London Marathon 2019 for Dementia Revolution, you can do so here.
Suze Endean 