This is the story of my first marathon in 1986. It was the birthday of my grandfather who was born in 1901 and was also Anzac Day. I thought surely I could do a marathon - it would be nothing compared to those who were at Gallipoli.

I was living in Bowral at the time, had only been running for two years. Anyway I did everything wrong, went out the night before , had nothing for breakfast, went out too fast - on 3:12 pace at half way, blew up from 30-35 km and found out the benefit of Coke in the final 7 km to finish in 3:42 hours - and my marathon PB.

The race scarred me so much my next marathon was 12 years later in Canberra in 1998 where I came across Cool Running Australia.