Running and all that

Well it's over. The Adidas Half Marathon that is.

I had been training for that event since June. I believe that I had adopted a sensible graduated approach to my training, but strange things happen. For instance, when I started, I had a really sore right ankle joint and the left knee was a bit dodgy. You would have thought running would have made these things worse. In fact, the opposite appears to have happened, they are ok and other things have come to take their place.

About a month ago I managed to run 21k more or less continuously. Just to prove I could do it twice, I tried again the following weekend. I only managed 13K-due to some ligament that runs from the knee to the top of the leg complaining bitterly.

Just to be clever (?) I decided to buy a new pair of running shoes the day before the race. I checked them out by running around the block in them. Great! Like running on air compared to the old ones, which were just sneakers.

Race day. Up at 3.45am to get the ferry across to Devenport, for a 6.45am start. Met up with the other NZSugar runners Steve, Anthony, Kevin, Lynn and Graeme. This is a seven thousand person event, and I was sanwiched somewhere in the middle. The first K was good, great pace, then whatever kicked in and hordes of people started passing me.

At about 8k I realised the obvious:you should not wear new running shoes on a long run. The muscles in my feet started complaining, and did not finish till the finish line. It was a process of run/walk/run.

I made my goal, which was to get to the start of the harbour bridge before 8.45am-that's when they were going to close it and any slow ones would get put on a bus.

It was walking fron there on. It was quite worrying:being passed by older and sometimes heavier persons than myself, who seemed to have a tremendous walking speed. Just after the bridge I was passed by Patrick, who had walked the whole race. Still, he is 6'3" and weighs in around 76kg and has long legs.

At the finish, I threw down a hot dog and beer and sat down in the kids playing area to wait for Rose, my wife to come and pick me up. She did wait, but at the children's kindergarten 100m up the road. In the end, tired of her not showing up, I got a taxi, but just as we went past the Franklin Rd supermarket, I spied Rose just driving out. A frantic stop and much arm waving sorted us all out.

The rest of the day was spent in recovery on the couch. Maybe I can have my life back now, please?