Move: Auckland Corporate Challenge 5km 2013

I picked up my first piece of race bling this week when I entered the Fidelity Life Corporate Challenge 5km run through work. I entered because work was paying, 5km isn’t too far for me so I didn’t really need to train for it and you got race bling for participating! It also helped that it was at the Auckland Domain so it was really close to both work and home.

After the rest of my team finally arriving and luckily they had my race number and timing chip (I hadn’t been in the office!) it wasn’t long until we started so we made our way to the start line and huddled with a bunch of strangers in the rain until the starter let us go.

I usually hate the shuffle to get over the start line of a race as your all raring to go and then you literally can not run anywhere and have to shuffle until you reach the starting pad where you try to run with no avail as there are people EVERYWHERE! It was not too bad for the Corporate Challenge and after not too long we were going over the starting line, the ipod was in and I was off dodging through people and finding my pace.

It took about half a lap (the race is two laps of the Domain) to get through the slower people and settle in to a pace I felt comfortable with. I had no real ambitions for the race other than to finish it really so I was not pushing myself too hard but did try to pass a few people where I could.

There was a part of the course where you run down a straight line and then back up the other side of it which I didn’t enjoy that much as turning such tight corners really breaks your stride when running!

I did enjoy the next part which was the slight incline up to the Auckland Museum where I overtook quite a few people on both laps which was encouraging for me and kept me pushing on. When you came back around the front of the museum the path has quite a few cobblestones running through it which meant I had to concentrate properly on this section so I didn’t roll an ankle (I am known to tune out during a run – or any exercise really and would be highly likely to roll an ankle.)

Next was a slight downhill and then a straight and back on to the grass for the second lap. On the second lap I knew where I was going and where I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy so much and could push on to the finish line as I knew it really wasn’t that far away.

On the second lap coming down the last little hill and back on to the grass I could feel my legs starting to tighten up and start trying to cramp on me so I had to dig deep and keep running through that.

It was a little bit confusing at the end of the second lap as the finish line was not in the same place as the start line, I worked it out when running however I know at least a couple of people ran on back to the start line and wondered why it didn’t look like a finish only to turn around and see that the finish line veered off to the left of the track.

I ran across the line not really paying much attention to my time but knew it was sub 25 minutes so I was pretty happy with that! After fumbling to get my timing chip off my laces (seriously hate how they have the timing chip bins as soon as you finish – maybe after the drink station would be good!) I found a couple of the male members from our team who regularly run and had finished a few minutes earlier and discovered that I was the first female back from our team.

I didn’t really think too much about the race until an e-mail came around the next day saying the results were up and where the quickest male and female (me!) from our office had come…

Sometimes you can completely surprise yourself – the results of the Corporate Challenge shocked me 100%, especially considering I did one run about a month out just to make sure I could still actually run 5km. Other than this random run I haven’t run regularly in quite a few years and even then it was a couple casual runs per week and nothing to write home about.

I ended up doing 23.35 minutes for the 5km which placed me second in my age group! I was first shocked at how I had gotten second in my age group – I’ve never been that good at anything before! And then when I looked at my time I was shocked again, I was aiming to get under 30minutes to be honest so I completely smashed that!

I guess that goes to show that completely ignoring the cardio equipment and only really doing weights at the gym doesn’t necesarily mean you will suck at cardio and be as unfit as you expected!

Have you entered any races recently?
When have you completely surprised yourself?

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