The Mousdash

What could be seen as being any crazier that doing your first triathlon when about 9 weeks pregnant? I've got a great answer - doing The Mousdash when you're almost 12 weeks pregnant!

So what's Mousdash I hear you ask.  The Mousdash is a run held by Nova in Brisbane during Movember to help in the fight against men's health issues, with the main targets being prostate cancer and depression. Two events are held. The 5.5km stroll or walk and the 10.5km stride or run. The 5.5km event is a walk from the planetarium to the Mt Coot-Tha Summit restaurant roundabout and return. While the 10.5km event is a run up and around the whole summit road of Mt Coot-Tha.

My DH and I signed up for this race before becoming pregnant and even at that time I knew it was going to be a very hard run.  All you have to do is look at the long section of the run by clicking on the view elevation button in the picture below to get an idea of the hell it puts you though.



I set my HR monitor to beep at me on this one each time I hit 165. The plan, which I did stick to, was to walk until my heart rate dropped below 155 before starting running again so as you could imagine there was A LOT of walking involved during the run.  I actually found this run physically tougher than the half marathon. Maybe its because I have a great distaste for hills.

The first couple of kilometers from the planetarium to the Summit Restaurant Roundabout were just plain nasty.  There may have been a short section that was relatively gradient free but in all honest I can't remember where it was as things just seemed to keep going up and up and up. I've driven up that road numerous times before but I've never realised just how steep it is. According to my map there was an average grade of 5% for 4km. All I can say is that the first kilometre was a lot harder and steeper than the gateway bridge!

After passing the roundabout there were a few undulating sections of road but they were never enough to really suck in some decent air before the climb started again. Then you were also taunted by the distance markers with their little comments on then. I could have yelled at the 5km one telling me I was half way there, if only I had enough lung capacity left!  Not long after passing the 5km marker I spotted the St John's ambulance and thought what a mind game play by setting up and halfway. Unfortunately it wasn't set up for that reason - it was treating some poor guy that had been beaten by the mountain outside of the gates to Channel 9.

After rounding Channel 9 the next kilometre wasn't too bad and then I got to hit my stride on the downhill chaser! 3km of downhill running and I loved every step. I actually felt like my form was good. I wasn't over striding but I wasn't breaking too much either.  To top it all off I was running averaging about 12kph for that section and flying past a whole heap of people. The at 9km someone decided to add it a section of up hill again - where the hell did that come from? It was absolute torture for about 500m before the downhill decent started again. Then some sadist of a person decided that the finishing shoot had to be uphill too - bastards! At least it wasn't too long.

All in all I conquered the mountain in 1:18:24.4  I was aiming at under 1:20:00 so I was rather happy with the effort. I was even happier to see that the fastest female took 42:16.5 which going by my previous results in relation to the fastest female made my day.  What was even more surprising is there was over a 10 percent DNF rate!

To top it all off I finally had a look at some of the pictures that were taken on the day and I can say that I think I finally look like a runner!