Stung by a Jellyfish, check!

Warning: If you're of a nervous disposition and seeing loads of men in Speedos might send your blood pressure up then don't look at the pictures.

Allen had his big race this Sunday. He's been training for the 2km Coles Classic race at Manly beach, and this Sunday was his big day. I got to the beach at around 10:15 for the start of the race at 10:45. We briefly saw Allen who looked quite nervous while waiting around. The course did look much longer than we thought it would be.

Here you can see the racers in Allen's age group all lined up and ready to go. There must have been about 1500 racers in all divided up into about a dozen or so different groups. There were also 1km and 10km races on throughout the day. We could just see the 10km racers coming in as we got to the beach.

Allen is amongst the group in this photo. It was really good to see so many swimmers running into the sea as soon as the starter gun went off. The all looked like a bunch of turtles running into their sea with their identical swimming caps on.

I think Allen decided to stay in the back end of the group to avoid getting tangled up in other swimmers. His previous times for around 2km were around the 47 minute mark. The average time for last years swim was around 36 minutes, so he was expecting to be at the back of his group anyhow.

This is the view of Shelly Beach from around the mid point of the course. You can just see a line of splashing swimmers in the distance as they go all the way up to Shelly Beach and then back around to Manly Beach.

Just watching all the swimmers made Deirdre, Emily and I all tired! We saw a couple of them lose their way at some of the turns and almost swim into the rocks as well! I can't imagine anything more demoralising than realising that you've had to swim further than you needed to.

Emily spotted Allen coming out of the water when we waited for him at the finishing post. He looked quite tired when he exited the sea and there was a group of people around him that all overran him to the finishing line. You can just see him running to the finish in the light blue striped Speedos in the very bottom right of this photo.

There was a radio commentator making jokes and talking about the swimmers as they came in. Allen said that he thought he heard the commentator talk about the food that could be bought at the BBQ. Then the commentator upon seeing Allen said that Allen should get some free BBQ food, instead of having to pay for it! Cheeky git!

Allen managed the 2km in 41.50s which was much faster than he expected. He figures the adrenaline and also the fact that he had to swim through some jellyfish along the course made his time faster. These jellyfish weren't the prosiness kind though.

David Walliams was also taking part in the race, which we didn't realise till the following day. There was an article on him in the local Sydney Morning Herald. A shame really as it would have been good to get a photo of him and Allen after the race.

So what did Allen get for his months of training and swimming the 2km. A can of Redbull, a plumb and form for the next 2km race at the end of February!

We all went to hang around the beach for the rest of the day. I hired out a body board and went body boarding. Typically for me there were some reports of the occasional bluebottle jellyfish (Portuguese Man o'War) in the sea. I swam into the sea with my bodyboard and on my first wave I felt a sharp pain on my left arm. I looked at it and couldn't see anything. For the next few minutes I kept feeling this pain in my left arm but couldn't see anything on it. A while later I could see some more jellyfish in the water so decided to get out in case I was stung.

As it turns out I was already stung on my arm. A local lifeguard identified the marks on my left arm as having been caused by a bluebottle jellyfish. He said that there wasn't anything that could be done about it and the pain would only last for around half and hour or so. It wasn't than painful more like a bad stinging nettle rash. I still have a few marks on my arm today but hopefully they'll go away soon enough.

We were surprised at the number of topless sunbathers on the beach. Definitely more than usual, unfortunately no pictures to make up for the men in Speedos in this entry.

Docked in Circular Quay was a very big cruise liner that we could see on our way back on the ferry. It literally dwarfed the harbour cruise terminal and even some of the buildings behind it.

I never could see why anyone would want to take a cruise for a holiday. To me it would be my idea of holiday hell. Being stuck on a big boat with loads of other people and not being able to get away at all. Still each to their own...