So during our morning meeting our editors enquired as to whether any of us young strapping students would be running the Makana Brick night race.
After a silence it was evident no one was planning to and in a moment of weakness and brave stupidity, I volunteered to run the race.
So during our morning meeting our editors enquired as to whether any of us young strapping students would be running the Makana Brick night race.
After a silence it was evident no one was planning to and in a moment of weakness and brave stupidity, I volunteered to run the race.
Seasoned runner Stephen Penny, with an evil grin on his face, mentioned I should write a little piece on it too, at which point I realised I would really have to try run eight kilometres.
Since leaving school five years ago my rate of activity has steadily declined, meaning 8km of running was going to be, well interesting.
So with much trepidation I arrived at the start on Wednesday evening to be greeted by over 600 happy and buzzing people.
It seemed I was surrounded by school kids, who I knew would probably beat me and most of them did! To my surprise I saw a man in a wheelchair being helped across the finish line later that evening by two St Andrew’s boys.
It was heartening to see that for young and old participation in the run was totally inclusive, a true community fun run! So the race started and I was off.
I made the mistake of starting near the front of the crowd and spent the first half of the race with people streaming past me, including 21 girls (yes I counted).
I quickly realised that any residual fitness from my school days was non existent but despite this soldiered on not stopping once for a walk the whole race.
I eventually made it to the finish line to my intense relief in a time of just over 41 minutes and collected the finishing prize of a pineapple with pride.
