Blackwood Marathon Relay 2008

Well I happened to sneak away for the weekend and competed in the 30th Blackwood Marathon event on Saturday. I entered this one as an Iron Man - Yes my first ever iron man event and I had a great time (except for the run).

I made the trip down on my own this time leaving Michelle and and kids to fend for themselves for a few days. I had another mate doing the iron man thing and a few other teams of mates that form the usual event and drinking crowd.

Firstly I must thank a couple of the boys for the excellent support work that was afforded to us iron persons, John and Matt thanks again for the assistance, photos and general support. Could not have done it without you.

Well as most of you will now know I am not a runner. I train, I try but I just cannot run well no matter how much effort I put in. Anyway I will keep trying to get better at this leg it is starting to let me down in most of my events. So the Blackwood event is made of of 4 stages (5 if you do the equestrian section - none of us did this), the run 12km, canoe 8.5km, swim 1km and into the bike 20km.

This event is held down in the beautiful Boyup Brook to Bridgetown area. I must say that I will have to go and spend a bit more time down in this area and I really liked Bridgetown. If you have ever visited this area you will know it is fairly hilly and it seems that the organisers have found a great and predominantly up hill course.

So the results of all this fun:

In the iron man category I came 6th out of 12 that completed with a total time of 2:59:51.

Run - 00:59:14
Canoe - 01:05:05
Swim - 00:14:09
Cycle - 00:41:23

In the overall 4 stage event out of 88 teams & iron persons that completed I came 31st.

If you are interested in entering or checking out the results, photos or anything else about the event see Blackwood Marathon Relay Website