The Commonwealth Games have been underway for the last two weeks. The Games are a meeting of athletes from Countries all over the Commonwealth to compete in a range of sporting activities. Naomi and I entered into the lottery style drawer about a year ago before we were even close to living in Brisbane, luckily we subsequently did move so we are nice and close for the events.
The games has meant that I very luckily got to spend two weekends in a row on the beautiful Gold Coast both with my friend Naomi (and staying in her beautiful family apartment) when we went to watch the Netball and with Naomi and the Aussie when we went to watch the Rugby Sevens match.
I also had the opportunity to “participate” in an event during the Games called the Gold Run.
The Gold Run was a 5km fun run held on a section of the Marathon course at the same time the Marathon runners were participating and which members of the public could enter for a fee. We got to start and end the race at the Marathon start line and received this nifty medal for participating!
The rules of the run were extensive and included the requirement that you must be able to complete the event in about 50 minutes because whilst the event was scheduled for an hour, the number of people participating meant it could take 10 minutes to get over the start line. If you didn’t finish in time you would be pulled from the course so you don’t interfere with the marathon finish.
I will admit that whilst I am a heck of a lot fitter than I was a year ago I was terrified I would not finish the race in time. In the run up to the event I dragged Naomi along to park run where we tried to get our time under 50 minutes. I managed in the trial runs to get to slightly over 50 minutes so thought it would be doable.
In the end I finished in 45.09 minutes and was thrilled both by my time and also that I managed to compete in this kind of event. I really pushed myself hard and was exhausted at the end even though it was only “5km” as I wanted to beat the cut off time and also my personal best and I did it and I was so so happy!!!
It was a once in a lifetime event an I now have the tshirt and medal to show for it and my fitness journey as well.
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