SATURDAY PARK RUN
The day dawned like any other day.... For most people. For me though it came with my impending second ever park run. Henry cheerfully announced the temperature was minus three
Pre race, we stood around sizing each other up. There was a jolly group, mostly in red and green Christmas outfits accompanied by a lady in a torquise ball gown.
The pre race briefing was drowned by dogs getting to know each other. Some fellow received a hearty round of applause as a first timer. I received a polite round of applause being from out of town. A young girl about 6 holding mums hand. Innumerable people with dogs or prams.
I positioned myself toward the back of the pack and we were off.
The pelaton stretched out in front which was handy to show the way.
I decided the first k would be a warm up so just kept to a slow jog.
It wasn't long before I observed my competition. A rather large lady in Christmas attire hampered by a cough. For quite a while I ended up about 20m behind a lady with a limp. One leg shorter than the other and the short leg sporting a foot that angled out to the side.
It was about then that I realised I had probably already reached peak speed.
As the heart rate increased, I wondered if I should have brought a defib or at least a Garman to tell me distance to death. Slowed to a walk and miss gammy leg limped into the distance followed by miss cough and go.
A couple of runners emerged coming towards me and in about third position was the lady in the ball gown. Figured Henry would be hot on her heels so got jogging again.
Henry passed but I figured I'd better keep going as James was expected. With a huge burst of energy I took miss coughalot and was closing on gammy leg when James came past with a cheerful "Hello". A few more seconds. Just a few.... and back to a walk.
Felt guilty approaching the turn around doing my best impression of a John Howard power walk as there was an over effervescent young lady cheering everyone on. So I broke into my best Decostella.
Shuffling up the hill. Motivated by miss coughalot and with miss gammy leg still visible ahead, I see in my peripheral vision the shadow of fat guy gaining on me. Finally too much and it's back to the power walk. Luckily the fat dude had sucuumbed as well.
With the end in sight, I reached deep inside and began to jog. Gradually closing on coughalot and finally taking her. The last k goes past beside the finish line so I had to keep at least appearing to run as James and Henry might be watching. Then to my horror we have to run further to another turn around. As I approach it, I take gammy leg and then observe aforementioned 6 year old on the way back after the turn around dragging mum along.
Another round of encouragement from a Marshall.
Eventually I cross the finish line secure in the knowledge I was beaten by a 6yo dragging her mum, innumerable dogs and prams and a man in a dress but having beaten a lady with the flu and a person with a gammy leg.
We added some 600mm panels
Post race breakfast
| Coombs parkrun results for event #226. Your time was 00:40:44. |
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| Congratulations on completing your 2nd parkrun and your 1st at Coombs parkrun today. You finished in 172nd place and were the 91st Male out of a field of 210 parkrunners and you came 4th in your age category VM60-64. Take a look at this week's full set of results on our website. Well done on your first parkrun. We have set this as your PB. |
| You achieved an age-graded score of 39.36%. For an explanation of age-grading, please see the WAVA age grading overview |
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