When one of my run club members approached me with the idea of registering for the Mile @ Marathon event, I immediately liked the concept as it was a lot different to your usual fun run or, in this case, marathon. Other members of my run club found the difference appealing too so we all decided to commit and enter as we could submit a team of 6 runners. We were in!

Prior to the day, we had a couple of location changes and a new team member but we were all ready for our challenge of running a 42km marathon as a team!

To be honest, it was tempting to just roll over in bed and go back to sleep that morning but, knowing I had other team members to think about, I quickly jumped out of bed. The weather looked ominous on the day with thunder as we left Mulgrave but the wind and sideways rain just prior to the start didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. What were we thinking???

We took turns each running 1 mile which is 1.6km. This involved 2 laps (800m) of Beauty Park in Frankston. It was a tough run due to the weather conditions and the ‘slight’ hill at the start of our 800m laps. Francis jumped in at the us last minute to fill the vacant team member spot and he was amazing to watch. He is training for the Melbourne Marathon and put in an awesome effort for our team. He was inspiring to us all as he ran each mile in under 6 ½ mins.! This encouraged us all to put in our best efforts in running our own laps. After 26 miles (42km) we had the last 0.2 mile (0.195km) to go to complete the full Marathon, we all ran this part together, which really summed up the day of team work!

Our team came fifth overall in a time of 3 hours 39 minutes and 14 seconds for the Marathon and second in our category of “Teams of 6”.

I was so proud of my team and the elation on their faces at the end which is what made it all worthwhile. Written by Cathy Grech, Julie Piening and Luci Tassone.