I woke up at 4.30am today. This is not usual for me. Sunday mornings are usually lie in mornings. I signed up for the Shape Run 2012 with some colleagues. Shape is a fitness magazine. I took part in the 5km category.
It was a good thing I made some provisions for driving time required in the event I got lost. I did. I missed the car park entrance to Golden Mile Complex and had to make a long detour. Fortunately I made it at the end. I have never seen so many ladies in pink tank tops at one place before.
This is the first time I am taking part in a public running event. The last time I did a 5km walk was in March. It was a charitable event organized by my company. That time I could manage to brisk walk with a couple of minuscule attempts at jogging towards the end of the 5km. I was looking forward to a different journey today.
The weather promised to be good today. Check out the rising sun. The clouds formed a pretty nice pattern.
There were male pacers who were wearing yellow t-shirts and orange balloons for the 5km runners. The pacers were targeting to complete the 5km in 30mins. Some of them were supposed to be hot....I didn't notice. None can compare to Baby Goose.....ha ha.
I was not exaggerating when I said there were a lot of ladies in pink.
After the warm up we began running. I felt pretty good about jogging. Ran past quite a number of ladies. It was regular breathing for a nice distance. I reached the first water point at 1.8km faster than I anticipated. The orange balloons were still in sight. It was very encouraging. But the next water point took forever to appear. The balloons got further and further away. After the second water point I felt hungry. Then my legs started getting heavier. At 4km, I had to walk. So I brisked walked as fast as I could. Ladies whom I overtook earlier started to run past me! I just couldn't bring myself to run anymore. I know it's shameful. What's one more kilometer? I am not the kind who thrives on encouragement from bystanders. I need my trainer or Gabriel to scold me. To add to my problem, I felt the urge to go to the toilet! Apparently drank too much water earlier and the toilet break before the race didn't help the cause much. It was weird because I was perspiring like nobody's business!
Nonetheless it was a relief when I saw the finish line and passed it. Then it was straight to the porta-loo. I regret making the decision to hit the porta-loo first. It was a super long queue for the goodie bag after I was done. Throngs of ladies were just trying to squeeze their way to the head of the queue. I made it eventually. There was a pink (again) bag with some stuff in there. I took the bag, walked a little bit around the grounds and decided to call it a day. There were not many freebies at the stalls, just a lot of photo taking. It was still a good day. The weather held and I was glad I wasn't last.
The end of the day for me. A nice sunny day......and some runners still trying to complete their run while I made my way to my car.
I reached home and Xavier asked me if I came in first. I was sorry to disappoint. Then he asked, "You finished 10?". Sorry again. But all 3 kids were pretty impressed when I showed them my finisher's medal. Ooooh.....mummy's got a medal.
I'm going to try to improve my time for the next run. Who knows, I might join the 10km category next year......if I survive till then. I'm sure I will. I just need to get the right fellas to continue scolding me till I get fit.
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