A pair of employees from Flight Centre Batemans Bay will travel to Sydney this weekend to compete in the grueling City 2 Surf fun run on Sunday.
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Matt Hatcher and Jess O’Hara will tackle the 14km course with 80,000 other runners in what has become the world’s largest fun run.
It is the first time Flight Centre at Batemans Bay has had competitors enter on its behalf and Hatcher and O’Hara will be joined by a small contingent of family and friends.
When asked how he expected to perform, Hatcher revealed a rather ambitious target.
“I plan on winning the whole thing,” he said.
However, Hatcher admits his goal might be slightly unrealistic considering his only physical preparation for the run involved two boot camp training sessions a few weeks ago.
Rather than being bogged down too much by doing physical exercise, Hatcher has preferred to focus his training on other areas.
“The mental preparation has been my main form of preparation,” he said.
“Every morning I wake up, have a shower, eat my breakfast and then for 10 minutes I stare at the ocean thinking about how I’m going to win. I think that should be good enough.”
O’Hara revealed she was a little more committed to working on the physical fitness side of things and she believes that might just give her the edge over her co-worker.
“I still go to the boot camps every week, it’s just Matt that doesn’t,” she said.
“I’m going to beat Matt, maybe by default. I might have to trip him over, but I will beat him.”
The course, which runs from Hyde Park in the Sydney CBD to the iconic Bondi Beach, is most notorious for ‘heartbreak hill’, a seemingly never ending uphill climb which features towards the back end of the race.
However, Hatcher and O’Hara have come up with their own unique methods of conquering the spirit-crushing slope.
“I just hope not to crawl because by that point it’s a long way into the race,” Hatcher said.
“I find that if you just put your head down, don’t look and just stare at the ground then you can’t tell it’s uphill and you can just keep going.”
O’Hara is drawing heart from the type of runners who’ve previously tackled the tortuous rise.
“Usually there are people in gorilla costumes and if they can get up heartbreak hill, I’m sure we can,” she said.
“Really we just need somebody with a bottle of champagne at the top of the hill waiting for us and we’ll be able to get there.”
Hatcher and O’Hara have been able to draw on the expertise of fellow Flight Centre employee, Ash Smart, who has completed the City 2 Surf in the past.
Smart’s advice to the pair was simple, but also a timely reminder of the difficulty of the challenge ahead.
“Rest in peace,” she said.