Every year my friend Jo participates in the Sydney City 2 Surf, a 14km run/walk (depending on preference) that starts in the middle of Sydney city and heads out to Bondi beach. And every year for the past few years at 7.30am I receive a text message telling me that she’s there. A few hours later I receive one to let me know she’s finished. Apparently that was all the inspiration I needed to decide to do the City 2 surf this year, so I added it to my list of things to complete for 2009.

One day sitting at work I found myself staring at the computer monitor. On the screen was the registration form for the race. I had no idea how I was going to get down there, where I was going to stay or who (if anyone) was coming to Sydney with me. But before I changed my mind I registered. It appeared I was going to Sydney in August!

A few weeks later while out one night on the town (vodka in hand) I proposed to my friend Julie that she join me in my quest. She readily accepted, although the following morning I realised her level of excitement was only matched by the level of beer in her belly. I gave it a few days, then checked again to see if she was serious. To my surprise, she came through and said she was keen. That was that! I convinced Mat to join us for the weekend (there was no way he would be joining us in the race, he thought we were nuts) but he could spend the time at the casino before meeting up with us later. Over the next few months I made travel arrangements until it was all set. Julie and I were doing the 2009 Sydney City 2 Surf.

Finally the day arrived for us to pack our stuff and get to Sydney. Unfortunately I had booked a 2pm flight which made it pretty difficult for us. Mat had to service a car in the morning and Julie had her schoolgirl’s netball team game at 11.30 (she’s the coach). As it was, I pushed Mat to get the service done asap, and Julie managed to leave her game at half time (with the parents taking over the coaching role). We arrived at the airport with half an hour to spare and headed to the bar.

When we arrived in Sydney we caught a taxi to the hotel where we were pleased to find out we had been upgraded to a couple of 1 bedroom apartments (instead of the studios we had booked). We agreed to meet in an hour so Mat could have a nap (we’d had a big one the night before) before making our way to dinner. We would be meeting my friends Jens and Alessandro, and Alessandro’s wife. Jens had recommended a Brazillian Barbecue in Woolloomooloo, Churrasco, and from the website it looked like it would be a pretty impressive place to go.

The restaurant easily surpassed my expectations. As you entered you were greeted by rows of wooden tables, and on the far wall the “kitchen”. About half a dozen rotisseries lined the wall, each holding a different kind of meat. We were greeted by the hostess who initially couldn’t find my reservation (which was scary, since the place was absolutely packed), but eventually we were led to a table. It turned out there was one big main room which extended from the front of the restaurant around a corner to the back, then around one more corner to form a U shape. There was also a private function room. We sat down and ordered our drinks, where I went straight for a Brazillian cocktail, a Caipirinha. Alessandro (our resident Brazillian) had never heard of the flavour variations they offered (strawberry & lychee and raspberry & macadamia amongst others) and strongly recommended the traditional lime, but I opted to try the strawberry & lychee while Jens went for the lime.

With regards to our dinner, for want of a better description it was like all you could eat. You remained seated, while the staff would come around with the various meat on skewers and put a bit on your plate (they asked first). We had about 5 different varieties of steak, chicken breast, something that resembled kabana, and most surprisingly, chicken heart! Usually I would have crinkled my nose in disgust and said no thanks but for some reason I felt daring. They put one on my plate, where I stared at it for a few seconds, took a photo so I could tweet about it, then finally ate it. To my surprise it actually tasted ok, but the extreme rubbery/chewy feeling was pretty gross.

The way Churrasco works is they have “shifts” for meal times. You can either book in at 6pm or 8pm. If you’re in at 6pm you have to be out by 8pm so the next people can come in. It sounds like you might possibly be rushed, but throughout the course of 2 hours you are served a LOT of food. I had to start declining offers for more food with still about an hour to go, there was just so much! As well as all the meat  you were also given bowls of rice to share amongst your group, and some small bowls of a breadcrumb like substance, barbecue sauce and some runny stuff with beans in it. This place was definitely a vegetarian’s worst nightmare since the focus was all on the meat although you could order salads if required. But for me it was all about the steak, which was just so tender and melted in your mouth. By far, Churrasco’s has the best steak I have ever tasted.

After dinner we made our way to the nearest sports bar so I could watch the inaugural A-League derby between Brisbane Roar and Gold Coast United. This meant venturing into Kings Cross, which I had great pleasure in doing. Why? Purely because I love seeing Mat react to situations he’s not familiar with, and seeing a lot of prostitutes/transvestites/scantily clad women all in one place is something he’s not experienced before. Jo had messaged me earlier telling me she’d located the game at the Kings Cross sports bar, so we made our way there. We grabbed some drinks, arranged the chairs in front of the tv and got comfortable.

After we had been watching the game for about ten to fifteen minutes, I was surprised to see two police officers guarding a door to my left. I hadn’t seen them when we arrived and I had no idea when they had taken up their post. I looked to my right and was even more shocked to see two more police officers over my right shoulder. Confused, I turned completely around to find two more police officers and a sniffer dog working their way through the room. Realising it was just a drug check (it WAS kings cross after all) and knowing I had nothing to worry about I returned my gaze to the soccer. About thirty seconds later one of the police officers over my right shoulder dived across the room and grabbed a guy to my right by the back of the neck pinning him to the ground.

“SPIT IT OUT” he shouted. “GET IT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH”.

Julie had been sitting only metres away from the guy, and got the biggest fright when he was pinned down directly beside her chair. At the same time the police officers on my left had run across the room in front of us (rudely blocking the tv – didn’t they know it was an important game??) and grabbed the remaining members of the group beside us. They lined them up on the wall and individually patted down for drugs/weapons before removing their shoes for inspection. After they had been cleared they were instructed to sit down until the police had finished with the others. I sat there secretly wishing one of the cops would use one of my favourite lines from the movie Forrest Gump, spoken by Lt Dan: Get down, shut up!

The police ended up arresting two guys, one being the dude who was pinned to the ground. It appeared he’d seen the police sniffer dog so tried to swallow the bag of drugs he had. After they had handcuffed him he’d sat on the chair waiting for the police officers to finish looking around, during which time I had sneaked a few glances at him. He was blankly staring at the tv screen grinding his teeth. We realised later that Julie’s bag had been idly sitting next to her on the couch, and it would have been only too easy for him to have thrown or spat anything into her bag. But the dog sniffer checked our area while the boys were getting frisked, and we were all passed as clean.

After the police had taken the two guys away the rest of the group remained for a couple more drinks and to chat about the nights events. Due to Julie’s supersonic ears (and listening into their conversation) she discovered that the guy who had been pinned on the floor was pretty much a stranger to the guys – that night was the first time they had met him. They knew that he had taken drugs earlier in the evening but weren’t aware that he was actually still carrying anything on him. I found it pretty impressive they stayed for drinks after all the excitement knowing almost every single person in the bar was looking at them; f it was me I would have been out of there. But then again perhaps it was only stares from our group, with the reputation of Kings Cross I would assume drug busts are quite common in that area.

After the game ended and Brisbane Roar’s lost 3-1 to Gold Coast United we decided to give Mat a small tour of the Kings Cross area. Jo bid us good night at this stage, as she was going to return home to get in some sleep before the early morning rise the following morning. Fran (who had arrived with Jo) decided to stay with us. We walked down to the iconic ball fountain in the middle of Kings Cross before making our way to “The Bourbon”, one of the many nightclubs. Along the way Jens had tried to get us into a strip club for free (after being approached by a guy who had told him it would “more or less” be free; $15 isn’t free), but I was greatly relieved when that plan failed. I definitely hadn’t envisaged spending the night watching women jiggle their bits in front of my face.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and drinking until the wee hours of the morning. We had ordered 3 jager bomb shots for which I made the mistake of sipping one and getting just a mouthful of jager. It actually tasted pretty good though, wasn’t as bad as taking a shot of tequila or vodka (but then again maybe it had mixed with some red bull already). We ended up leaving the bar at approximately quarter past 2 (making a rough guess here), and while Julie and Jens opted for a taxi Mat and I walked the few kilometres back to the hotel.

4 hours later I was awoken by a text message from Jo letting me know she was on her way to the hotel to pick us up for the race. Shit.

I dragged myself out of bed, and spent the next 15mins wandering around the room trying to wake myself up. By the time Jo arrived I had managed nothing else but to put some jeans on (still had my flannel pj shirt on) and drink some water. It’s fair to say I was one big hungover mess. I got Jo to knock on Julie’s hotel room door (to save me from having to venture out in my pj/jean ensemble), where she answered looking worse than me. She agreed to be ready in the next half hour. I had a shower, boiled the water but didn’t make a coffee, Jens arrived, then finally Julie joined us ready to go. I said goodbye to Mat, we checked Julie out downstairs at reception and put her  bag into storage then we left to go join the race. It was 8.15am and I was running on 4 hours sleep. I expected a long, tiring day.

An hour later we were at Hyde Park eating some breakfast we’d picked up from a rebranded Starbucks (Tom n Toms). We were waiting for Jens’ friends to arrive since they had his bib and timing chip, and without those he wouldn’t be able to enter the race. Half an hour later they showed up, while we stirred Jo about making us get up so early so we could sit on a street corner. You could see Jo was really antsy to hurry up and join the race (honestly, WAY too much energy for that time of the morning) and finally we walked up to start the race. Somehow or other by heading directly to the start line we were able to start walking immediately, as opposed to walking 1km in the other direction and lining up at the end like you were meant to do. Bonus!

We started walking down William Street heading towards to the Cross City Tunnel. The first kilometre I pretty much spent looking around in shock at just how many people there were! It wasn’t squashy as such, we didn’t flow down the street shoulder to shoulder in one massive pack. There was room to walk comfortably, but you had to feel sorry for the people that were attempting to run. I’m pretty sure they spent the entire race simply dodging people. I was glad that I’d chosen to walk the race since I had no idea if my knee would be able to keep up with the constant pressure of changing directions. After the race had finished, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to jog it anyway, 14kms is a long way by foot!

As we entered the tunnel I was horrified to see ambulance offers already attending to someone. They were holding a sheet up in an attempt to get some privacy for the ill person who I later found out had suffered a heart attack. Thankfully it wasn’t a life ending one, and I believe the person made a full recovery.

One of my favourite memories of the City 2 Surf was the entertainers lining the side of the street. There were rock bands playing on roofs, random super heros in the sky, and groups of people purely cheering on everyone. What a great atmosphere! A group of runners passed us at this stage dressed in black skins and fluro green budgie smugglers (dt’s, small male togs, whatever you want to call them). There was about 10 – 15 of them, with 6 of them carrying a stretcher with a small child sitting on top. As they ran, they would take turns switching positions so all of them was carrying the stretcher at some point. I’m not sure where they were from, if it was a sporting team or not but it was great to see.

A common feature of the City 2 Surf is the number of people that choose to dress up for the occasion. There were the super heros of course (and typically a lot of younger girls wearing super hero outfits just to show off some flesh), gorillas, and my particular favourite, a group of people dressed as mushrooms! I don’t know if this was in reference to Super Mario or not but they looked absolutely fantastic. I’ve seen a lot of photos of them since the race so they sure did get a lot of publicity. I admired their ability to walk 14km in white overalls though, I’m sure they would have been hot!

There were several drink stations along the way which were extremely handy. I had been carrying a water bottle with me (a mandatory item since attempting to recover from a hangover) until I accidentally dropped it and it rolled away under mounds of feet. From that point on every drink station became a pick up point for some more water. When we reached the gatorade stops you could smell the sweetness in the air from all the dropped drinks and our shoes became sticky. It was amazing seeing all the discarded cups following the drink stations. They lined the gutters and were all over the roads, and for about 5mins after leaving a drink station the noise of scuffed plastic cups overwhelmed us. We bitched about how hard it was for people to simply lift their feet or dodge the cups entirely, but I guess people weren’t really paying attention to where they were stepping. Keeping on walking was a big enough achievement.

Eventually we reached heartbreak hill, a so-called section of the race for the continuous incline. It wasn’t so particularly steep as it was long, it just kept going on and on forever! I had been telling everyone the night before that I was going to run up the hill (so that I’d at least run some of it, and the hardest bit at that) but by the time we reached there I knew there was no way I’d be running. I was already feeling it in my legs and we had yet to reach the halfway point. Julie and Jens decided to run, so Jo and I agreed to meet them somewhere at the finish line and wished them good luck. We continued on walking at a general power walking pace. A short way up the hill we discovered with glee we were at the 7km mark, and therefore halfway done!

We reached the top of the hill just as Jo realised she needed to tie her laces. In doing so we stopped for the first time and immediately the fatigue in our legs set in. A woman on the sideline was explaining to her son that all the people in the race were very fit, but I disputed it. I claimed that I wasn’t fit but that I was just crazy; she concurred and said that was the only way she would ever contemplate joining in as well.

About 10mins later we looked up into the sky to see a plane writing “2009″ in the air. I snapped a picture, then a few minutes later we realised there was more text. Watching the plane write each letter kept us entertained for the next kilometre until eventually the text was complete. it read “2009 call mum”. I’m not sure if it was an ad for a mobile phone company or not, but decided to heed the advice and rang home. My mum didn’t answer, but wishing not to fail I rang my sister instead. I told her to do her best mum impression, and we jokingly said the most smart ass “mum’isms” we could. I know mum would have been pissed if she’d heard us, but it was all in good humour. I updated my sister on the race, and very much ashamed, advised her we had been overtaken by people in wheelchairs (although they were actually being pushed by other people) as well as people many many generations older than us. We had even been overtaken by blind people (they had guides with them). After I hung up my mum rang back, so I had the same conversation with her minus the mum impressions. Following that phone call, I was very much shocked to see a man in a wheelchair wheel himself past us. He had the most muscular arms, and was absolutely charging! Very fit, and very inspirational to show what people can do. I also felt incredibly lazy.

Eventually we started on the down hill section that would lead us into Bondi. Seeing the beach ahead of us I was shocked to see the entire town just overrun with people. It literally looked like one big sea of people, and there was more of us coming! Seeing Bondi is a bit of a mind tease as well, since you think you’re almost to the end when in fact you’ve got almost 2km left to go. We collected some bags containing newspapers (which I kept only the front page saying “YOU’VE DONE IT”) then made our way to the finish line. As we walked there, Jo wondered aloud about the medals that we would be getting. I almost yelled in excitement since I had completely forgotten we would get little medals for completing the race! Woohoo!! It just made me want to get to the finish line faster, and finally we made it. I vowed that we would cross the finish line running, but we left it until the last second. Literally. I think we ran for about 1.5 seconds at most. But we had done it! It had taken us 158mins, or 2 hrs and 38mins, but we’d done it!

After we finished and collected our medals from the finish line we immediately headed to a grassy area to stretch our legs out. I was incredibly sore, but knew it would be only a thousand times worse the following day. I stretched out my calves, hamstrings and quads, but stupidly forgot about my hip flexors. Never, ever again. The days following the race I found I could barely walk, purely from this muscle area not having been stretched out after the race. I stretched as much as I could the following days, but it still took its time before the ache went away.

We found Julie and Jens on the beach and took photos of us with our medals and bibs, and shared stories from the second half of the race. They’d managed to run not only heart break hill but the entire second half of the race, I was so incredibly proud of them. Maybe next year I’ll think about that (maybe). After discussing it for a bit, and Jo pointing out how big the line for the bus was already we decided we would go straight for the bus line and head back into the city. It was just on lunch time, and while our flight wasn’t until 6.30pm that night I still wanted to get back to our stuff and change into something a bit more comfortable. I was hot and sweaty, and didn’t want to spend the next few hours in stinky clothes.

Going straight for the bus was by far my best decision of the day. I left the others in the line while I went and picked up some water and gatorade, and a pizza from Bondi Pizza. Their entire restaurant had been hired out for a private function (a corporate function for employees in the race) but were still doing takeaways which suited us perfectly. Taking the pizza and drinks back to the others we greedily tucked in except for Jo, who I found out didn’t like pizza (blasphemy I say). I offered to go back and get her something else but she declined. It was about 2 hours later when we finally sat down on a bus back into the city.

All the time that Julie, Jens, Jo and myself had been competing in the city 2 surf Mat had been at Star City, Sydney’s casino. He had been playing poker for the day rather than being crazy like us; the worst he could have done was get a hand strain from holding cards. As we headed into the city I rang him and we agreed to meet him back at the hotel. We arrived in the city and went for coffee in a nearby shopping centre, just as Mat rung and said he was at the hotel. I’d expected him to be another 20mins at least! Oops. We gulped our drinks down and walked down to meet Mat.

Once back at the hotel we changed into normal clothes and decided we would head down to Darling Harbour for a quiet drink or two before going to the hotel. We bid Jo goodbye, and started the short walk down to the harbour. After all, when you’ve already walked 14km in one day what’s another one or two? We sat down at a bar, or rather, collapsed into their chairs. Our lack of sleep finally caught up with us here, and although I’d felt great after the city 2 surf (no signs of a hangover anymore) there was a noticeable quietness amongst the group. Mat was the only one feeling chipper, but that was understandable given he’d been able to sleep in until 9am, casually get dressed and head down to the casino for a day in the air con. The rest of us just sat in a dozy silence, until finally I piped up and suggested we head to the airport. I hate the stress of running late so preferred we get there sooner rather than later, even if it meant hanging around the airport for a bit. We could spend it by eating some dinner and generally lazing around the airport. We said goodbye to Jens, got a taxi, and sped off to the airport.

Once there we ate some dinner, and then waited in the chairs outside our gate. When we finally boarded I was told my bag was too big for carry on luggage (figured I would be able to take it since it was for both Mat and I, but alas that was not the case although it had worked on the flight down there) so they took it down for checking in while we got on the plane. Once sitting down, we all pretty much fell straight asleep until we arrived in Brisbane. We got off the plane, collected the luggage, and drove home. We were absolutely shattered when we got back, and Mat and I pretty much just threw the bags down and went straight to bed. It had been a long, long weekend, but I know I will be doing the same thing all over again next year. It was just too much fun to not want to do it in 2010.

**For more photos from the weekend, please have a look at my “Night out in Kings Cross” and “City 2 Surf” albums in facebook**

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