BRIDGE to BRISBANE 2012 – YES I’M GOING RETRO

This year marked the 9th year since my first ever running event outside of school based carnivals. Partially on a whim, partially because the schedule with work and football worked out positively I was able to enter the 5km event of the 2012 Bridge to Brisbane. So what relevance does this have for 2021? Well it turns out that once again the work schedule was advantageous to me and Covid forced a switch of date from the football season and I was able to run the 10km event for just the second time (the other was in 2013), and perhaps the memories came flooding back. This year’s race run was recorded and a Vlog will come later in the week, with so much editing to be done in the interim.

Back to 2012, and after the footy season ended with me recovering from a calf injury and the team eliminated early, I was able to lodge an entry literally a week before the race itself. The difference this year was that my entry came a fortnight before the run once I knew work wasn’t going to be an obstacle in attending. However this was also a weekend and indeed a day where the Brisbane Lions were playing the Western Bulldogs in what amounted to be a meaningless final game of the 2012 AFL regular season with neither team in contention for finals, so I was able to tag along with the old man and one of the younger siblings along with some other mates of my father that weekend. This however did pose a problem as their mode of transportation on the Saturday involved a 7 hour drive meaning that I would need to find another way to collect the race bib, as like this year there was no race day bib collection. It did facilitate a rather rushed trip down to Brisbane during the week with the only purpose being to obtain my race number.

Unlike most of the other events I’ve done over the years, the start time for the 5km in 2011 was at a comparatively reasonable hour, but the location of accommodation in Kangaroo Point did make transportation a little trickier. Fortunately there were buses that would take me from Wolloongabba bus station (which will soon be an underground train station, that project was started and designed long before Brisbane would become an Olympic City) to the finish precinct at the RNA Showgrounds. From there it was another bus ride to the start line located at Hercules Street Park near Hamilton (the suburb of Brisbane, not the Victorian country town or Canadian or New Zealand provincial city), where it was a long wait. It was during that long wait where I discovered the shorts I was using didn’t have pockets to carry my phone, motel room key or wallet. Yes I was aware there wasn’t a bag drop facility but this was so last minute and so novice that I didn’t think about how I was going to run with those items on board. I thought it would be OK to tuck them into the top of the shorts but the chances of them dropping onto the road and being either trampled on or forgotten about with so many behind me would be too great.

The run itself was largely uneventful, with my only real concern was a re-aggravation of the calf issues. I wouldn’t say it was a flat out sprint although at that stage the legs had substantially fewer kilometres on them and the weight was much lower than it is today. The final time of 27:08 these days would be the time I would be happy with at Parkrun whenever I can get out there, but at the time I had no idea of how fast I would, could or planned to go. It was all about simply finishing more than anything else. It was also by far the highlight of the day for the football later that afternoon was decidedly average and I had an early flight home to get back to work the next day to look forward to as opposed to another 7 hours in a car.

Moving forward to this year, the time was ordinary and the aims were about as simplistic, but that story in video format will come in the coming days as well as an updated schedule for later on.