Part of the reason we visited Queenstown (besides the fact that it’s gorgeous!) was that I decided to run the Queenstown Marathon. Chris ultimately ended up signing up too (so he did 2 marathons only 3 weeks apart!). It worked out well with the timing of our trip and it was marathon continent #5 for me (only Africa and Antarctica left to go!). We got pretty good swag from the race and they even gave out free 4-packs of bagels!
I had been neurotically watching the weather and it was really shaping up to be pretty awful weather (low 40s and raining – I can live with cold or rain but together they’re not so fun; if any of you have run the Shamrock marathon/half marathon in Virginia Beach you know what I mean!). Even as we went to bed the night before, it was looking like cold and rain for the first half of the race. Then we woke up race morning to a completely different forecast! It was still cold (and had even snowed a bit up in the mountains overnight) but rain was no longer in the forecast. Perfect for race morning. They did have quite a bit of rain in the weeks leading up to the race and ultimately had to adjust the course due to a portion of the track along the lake having standing water. So I was glad they made that adjustment – running with wet shoes and socks was gonna be cold and also a recipe for blisters. About 70% of the course was on packed gravel trails and the rest was on asphalt road.
We bought throwaway sweatshirts from a local thrift shop earlier in the week to wear at the start and they gave us these neck gaiters in the race bags so that was handy. The sweatshirts came in very handy while we waiting in line for 1 1/2 hours to get our shuttle bus! We got on our shuttle at 0800. It was chilly waiting but then we got to warm up a bit on the bus ride. The race started at 0820 and was about a 25 min drive from town – it was a point-to-point race so it ended in town but started up the road in Arrowtown. The shuttles were running from 0600-0725 so we got there at 0630 …. and were waiting for 90 minutes! You can see the line snakes around the block and it extended super far up the hill behind us too. They actually had to delay the race start by about 10 min because of the shuttle bus mess. The half marathon shared the 2nd half of the course with us and started before us so I think the shuttle buses got caught up in half marathon traffic. We got up there right at 0820 – the silver lining was no bathroom lines! Because we basically got there and the race started, we decided to stick our “throw away” sweatshirts into Chris’ gear check bag (he also had a long sleeve shirt and a rain coat for after the race).
At some point about mid-way through the race someone mentioned it was hailing down in Queenstown. We still had a while before we finished – the benefit of being slow was that it stopped hailing well before we got into town! It was really a beautiful course and all of the volunteers (and spectators) were so great! Chris ran with me the whole race so we got to finish together (when we finished holding hands, the race announcer asked if we ran the whole race that way!). I was definitely under-trained for this with everything we’ve had going on (retiring, selling the house, moving, etc) but the race cut off allowed for a very slow pace. We took our time and stopped a lot for pictures. They had race photographers at a bunch of spots along the way too. I took so many pictures! Here is a small sampling of them 🙂
Are you still here? Thanks for hanging in there and putting up with my many pictures! Sadly at the end of the race, they lost Chris’ gear bag. So the organization part was not so great (between that and the shuttle bus situation) – but the race itself was amazing and the volunteers really were fantastic!
After a tip on this place from a friend, I had booked us for an Onsen the day after the race (https://www.onsen.co.nz; I booked it several months ahead of time and I’m so glad I did because it was sold out for the next couple of weeks!). It’s basically a private tub that overlooks the Shotover river. We did the 60 min session with just the soak but they also had massage options and also a room with a cold plunge in addition to the hot soak (there was a shower in the room so I just got a “cold plunge” in the shower instead lol). Our session also came with a drink each. They also have a free pick up/drop off from town which was nice since we didn’t have a car. Right when we pulled up everyone was outside – there was a fire alarm! Thankfully it was a false alarm and shortly after that everyone headed back in. But I was so glad we weren’t mid-session for that!
And of course we had to take our medals out for a post-race beer … but I was tempted to just stay in the apartment given the hills we had to go up and down just to leave and return to the apartment!
Cheers! Next up Auckland ….
