Sydney Half-Marathon

Today I ran the Sydney half-marathon with a few of my friends that I met here in Australia. Although I played many sports growing up and in high school, I have never been a runner and have therefore never before participated in a competitive race. When I arrived at 5:30 this morning, it was quite intimidating to see all of the other runners who appeared to be incredibly athletic and in extremely good shape. Running beside such athletes inspired me to push myself further, and while I originally only had the intention to finish the half-marathon I soon adapted the goal of completing the race with walking as little as possible and only in increments of ten seconds. Because the course looped around at certain points, I was able to observe the runners in the top fifty running the other direction from the way I ran. I was amazed at their speed and strength, and also moved by the handicapped participants who were in the top tier. As I crossed the finish line hundreds of spectators cheered me on, all holding up signs and screaming for me to push through the end. It was a truly incredible event, and I was so happy I was able to finish the race! While I have never before run a marathon, I do always watch the Boston marathon, which runs past Boston College – my home university. From my observations, the two marathons were incredibly similar. Both have thousands of participants, many of whom run to compete while many others run for a cause. The level of competition was therefore comparable to that in America, which surprised me because the level of competition has been higher in almost all of the other sports I have observed in Australia. Although running is not a distinctly Australian sport, those I ran with all seemed to be just as dedicated to the sport as any other Australian athlete and the spectators seemed to support and appreciate the sport just as much as all the others.