Herald Sun | CityLink - Run for the Kids 2011
Sunday 17 April 2011, 9:15AM - website facebook results
14.38 km around Melbourne - including over the Bolte Bridge.
This was my first "Run for the Kids" (R4K). It was certainly an experience.
Although I have trained with the RitB run group for the last few years, I have usually done a Triathlon on that day instead. Being of a similar distance (14.4km) and altitude variation to the Great Train Race that I had done for the first time in 2010 (50:03 13.2km) and also the Grape Run (13.2km - 2009 58:23, 2010 57:27), allowing for the extra 1km or so I estimated a time of 60-65 mins, or more accurately at an estimated pace of @4:21 => 62:33. Amazingly I actually ran exactly that 1:02:33!
Even though we were only some 10 metres back from the fastest non-elite start line, when the tape dropped immediately prior to the start, we were suddenly some distance back in the pack. A lot of people came in from the sides.
We were even behind the "Smurfs", 3 guys with white pants, hats, and shoe covers, and blue body paint, as we passed them at around 400m, I heard one of them ask if they had done a km yet! We passed at least a hundred people by taking the outside line, and the almost 180 degree corner into the tunnel. We had a little train of 4 of us weaving thru the crowd in the tunnel. Our first km was around 5 mins, and it took us a few kms to get out of the "rabble", basically as we came out of the tunnel.
Side note: the Garmin GPS doesn't work in the tunnel - duh. It did appear to switch to my footpod speed inside the tunnel. But the distance didn't come right when I came out into the light!
I dropped some 30 seconds behind my running "partner" at the 10km mark, which I never got back, but we had powered up the Bolte, neither of us willing to drop the pace (much), as we passed heaps of people there.
Of course I would have loved to break the 60 minutes barrier, maybe next time, but I was happy with my result: 729th of 18050 finishers, the largest race participant field I have been in. My time was just a little too slow to make the fastest 6 of the RitB team, which came in 6th team, and 3rd in the community division.
