Hail Hurts. First HM Race Report

Race report to follow tomorrow morning, for now I need sleep...

Warning: long post below for result only skip to end.

Where to start...how about at the start...
Turned up at Adelaide Oval on a cold, windy and wet morning...forecast 15C rain and possible hail. I was wearing my new shoes but a wise head prevailed and I put on my old nikes before getting out of the car. Made my way onto a bus for the trip to the start line, the crowd was bigger than I imagined two full bus loads. At the start line there where a lot of people milling around inside trying to stay out of the cold. I got my race number and stood outside next to the building, there was a few brief showers and some seemed to contain 5mm sized hail stones (a sign of things to come).
The time came to move away from the building down the road 150m to the start line, I gues the field was about 100 strong, then the hail came down and everyone scattered to near by bushes, trees or houses. They only crept back out when the race director said they were about to start and then we were off...oh how cold my toes were numb.
I resisted the urge to scream off with the pack and held back letting them spring off into the distance, settled into a nice pace but got annoyed by the sound of many heavy footfalls behind so I put a little spurt on down a long hill and I was away by my self.
Targeted a few people in front and slowly ran them down till I found two ladies running a pace I was happy with and fell in behind them. A couple of ks in the hail hit...boy does it sting on bare cold skin...the ground was covered in an icy white winter wonderland and the sharp ups and downs of the river path was treacherously slippery. The ladies slowed down and I passed them ignoring the first drink station and running on through (ok 2 good decisions so far this was the first bad one, igoring my training regime). 2k after the drink station the ladies caught back up so I fell in behind them again, enduring another couple of minutes of hail and also sleety rain in a strong head wind...boy was this a run I am never going to forget...I was soaked from head to toe and the ladies in front were still running around the puddles on the path...me I ran straight through everything. (They said it was psycological). Keeping up a relatively steady pace we had been reeling in people from the start (and this would continue till the end), with 7k to go the ladies slow pace up inclines was starting to annoy me so up one particularly long one I put on a spurt for 2k till the 5k to go drink station and put about a minute on them.
Now the sun was out. This was the killer 5k, because you pass the finish line on the opposite side of the river and have to run up to a turn around and back...very damaging for the psycology and I gave in to a brief walk with 3k to go, still heading up to the turn around (and still passing people). Chaffing was also becoming painful as the rain/hail earlier had washed away any protection from that nasty beast (though the water proof bandaids were still attached to the upper body chaffing region). Made it to the turn around and passed a few more strugglers going back toward the weir accross to the finishing side of the river, don't know how my legs were doing it but I was still keeping up a good pace.
So with a couple of hundred metres to go (though you can not see the finish line till 50m to go I was really badly considering a walk until a guy comes galloping up from begind to pull in along side. I turned to him and said "going for a sprint finish" he replied "no, but I have been chasing your bright red hat since the start and badly wanted to catch you" we ran together till the end where he let me finish first (thanks whoever you were for making those last minutes enjoyable).

Crossed the finish line in 2hr11min55sec. I don't think I could have run any faster under the conditions. Everything went to plan...except for skipping that first walk break, but I took that extra one at the end.

After a shower, breakfast and a little sit down I headed down to the footy oval...damn our team was short on numbers...guess I am playing...managed a full game at half forward (my first game of footy in 365 days)needless to say my skills were crap and we lost by 3 goals, not bad for a team playing 3 players down for 3 quarters. Then came the beer (enough said).

All up a memorable first HM run in Rain, hail and shine, I included a chart of split paces below (kms weren't marked and Garmy is slightly off but chart is generally indicative and shows the 2k surge I but on around the 14k mark.)