United by the moment...at the Commonwealth Games!

Hee hee, today I went to my first ever live sporting event...which happened to be the athletics at the Commonwealth Games!

The only drawback to it was the fact I had to get up early, which seemed kind of wrong for a Sunday morning. Normally, an early morning doesn't bother me that much, but I had been at Ryan's birthday's party...

So, being a bit blerry eyed, my brothers and I headed off for the MCG via the train. At 7:30am in the morning. It ended up being that we got to the MCG at 8:30am (events didn't start until 9:00am), but at least we were able to find our seats easily (it also helped we had previously been to the MCG during the Commonwealth Games Open Day of all the venues). Our seats were actually all right - we were on the ground level (not in the stands) so we had a pretty good view of the track - just before the back straight. However, we were in the coldest part of the MCG...the sun didn't come our way until 2:00pm!

But we were able to see a variety of events - the 100m events, the marathons, the 400m events, javelin and shotput. Plus some medal ceremonies. My favourite had to be the women's marathon - it was such a close race between Australian Kerryn McCann and Kenyan Hellen Cherono, and when Australian Kerryn McCann arrived back to the MCG, the atmosphere was absolutely amazing - we were all (76,500 people!) on our feet, cheering her on and being 'united by the moment' and I got in touch with my inner hooligan! And when she was presented with her medal, the stadium was on their feet singing the Australian anthem. I now understand why people get so involved at sporting events! There were many other highlights, but the ones I'll mention here are:
- at one of the 100m events, the athlete kept running and ended up doing an entire lap of the track until one of the officials told him the race was over
- doing mexican waves - very cool watching it go around the stadium!
- cheering on the last competitors of the marathons
- watching the marathons on the big screen and going "Look there's Melbourne Uni/Royal Parade/Grattan St/Royal Exhibition Building etc...
- and the crazy spectator who decided to run across the MCG. It was funny watching the police trying to 'figure out' the best was to stop her!

We ended up staying until 3:00pm when the last of the athletics was done. The plan was to then check out some of the festival events in the city, but we ended up either just missing the session or went to the wrong venue. So after that, we headed home. But it was fun to watch and I'd probably go to other live sporting events in the future! You feel a kind of kinship with the everyone else there as you cheer and barrack for a particular athlete/team to win.

*sigh* now its back to uni and the regular lab routine...but that's got its own surprises!