ALI Fitch overcame a genuine scare within three kilometres of the half-marathon finish line on the way to claiming the women's Treble Bridge Buster title at the 2019 Forster Running Festival on Sunday.
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Fitch then backed up her 21-kilometre run with another 10-kay and five-kay effort as she became the outright female winner after pounding the pavement for 36 kilometres in the least accumulated time.
It wasn't all smooth sailing though.
"I had a really bad blackout at about 18 kays into the half marathon," she said.
"I had to stop because I was about to faint and it was because all my electrolytes were funny because I had picked up a virus from my daughter.
"It was quite scary. The last three kays I couldn't maintain the pace because I was in all sorts of bother so I was quite nervous for the 10 kay.
"Instead of keeping to my plan of maintaining the pace in the 10 kay I knew the lady coming second so I knew I had to stay with her because then I'd win overall."
After winning the overall honour at Forster last year, Fitch said it was arguably more pleasing to back it up the second time around.
"It's pretty satisfying personally; I'm not that young anymore," she said.
"It's nice to go out on top at 46 and show people what you can do even as you get a little older because that's my motivation.
"I like to push the limits of what and when people think you have to stop.
"I like getting the best out of myself whatever happens. I could easily have stopped after the 21, but I wasn't going to do that."
Fitch admitted it was "tricky" to decide on the best plan of attack on how to approach the three different events.
"You really have to work on your pacing," she said.
"I'll normally do the half marathon in about an hour 40 minutes so then you've got 20 or 30 minutes to stand around.
"You don't know if that's a good thing or whether you're best off to go slower so you have less time to cramp up, or go faster and have more time to recover between the races."
She admitted her tactics were to be consistent throughout the 36-kilometres.
"I knew I had to back off the pace to stop the cramping which I found was a comfortable pace in the 10 kay and then the five."
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