A Place in the Run.

Bobbin Park, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, was the delightful meeting and lunch spot, chosen by Richard and Chris, our friends from Horsby.
Richard bravely tackled the barbeque, marvelling how we have been here over 7 months and this was his first BBQ on a public one (these Aussie BBQs really are brilliant...no wonder it's so popular here...it's so easy...no yucky grills/grids etc to clean...just one easy plate.....sorry for starting to go off on one!)
Chris obviously thought the same.....he politely told me.....just one sausage sizzle for him then.



A little warm up walk before the big one on Sunday....but we didn't tell the children we were going for a walk in the bush...they tend to object....we pointed out interesting things like the fascinating mud crabs.



Nice view!


The Aboriginal Art that you can't see very well on this rock was explained in the information plaque...but I'd better not say what Chris really said about the artistic merits of the carving.



City2Surf....race day...Sunday 13th August.
Up at 5.30 to catch the train....well that's what Chris ordered...but he was naughty and put the alarm on to snooze for 15mins, (it makes all the difference, you know!) Richard was most put out to have got up the earliest....but we all got there on time!
We even had encouraging messages in the sky........actually the message finished ........'Donut King.'.......not a good message for running!


All ready for the big race...with 63,500 others! Jessica commented that the porter Loo she used was truely the worst she has ever been in. Each Loo had a queue 20 deep...in people, that is. ....and we're talking a lot of nervous people....that sure is a lot of poop....with no flush.....I was nearly sick! The organisers wanted a sea of red....so they gave out red hats.....(a sea of green would have been really easy!)
ANYWAY, that's enough of that....here we are in our red hats....Jess, Alex & Luke had their faces painted.......I have to confess the Danish part of my brain made me paint Jess's face with a Danish flag, instead of English! It did lead to a chance to practise my second language though, as I chatted with a Danish family living in Sydney.



Alex wanted to see the proper runners who were 7 mins from finshing as we went over the starting line! Poor Chris couldn't get running until after the 3km mark because there were so many walkers in the way!


We saw lots of interesting sights.....Richard photographed this girl in pink......he said it was just because of the T'shirt! It did give us a good topic of converstion for the next km.



Jess liked the dressed up runners.....she always grabs anyone in an animal costume!! (it must be memories of Disney!)



Entertainment, garden parties and people squirted us with water...


The children took it in turns to moan....here's some advice if you ever take children on a long walk....don't walk with your own kids....they don't seem to moan to other people, we discovered!
The sight of Bondi Beach seemed to put a skip into Alex's step and cheered him up...especially when he saw a Mc Donalds sign! We mused later as to why it had taken us eight months to visit this Australian icon (name another Australian beach?)
The two main reasons were every "Novocastrian" we speak to says, "don't bother, ours are better" and it is also now tainted with the Race Riots headlines from last December. We really liked it though and may be tempted back with our boardies before the year is out and see how it looks with a few less thousand people on it. Having said this our positive view may have been encouraged by the fact it was also the finish line. When we do the Totton 10K, Testwood school seems like an oasis.



At last....we reached the finish......Chris finished at an offical ( and he says a pathetic) time of 94 mins and then had another 90 mins (92to be precise) to wait for us! He confessed to a Rum&Raisin ice cream...which he rarely eats....he must have been bored!
Alex got confused about his victory sign.....I think he was trying to copy Luke......or maybe he was telling us what he really thought of the 14km walk (we at least ran the final 200m to the finish!)



Enjoying the free newspaper on Bondi Beach......with 60 thousand others! Chris contemplated world affairs and how on earth he was going to get back up again having laid down.