Mother's Day Classic

On Sunday, Bryan and I represented TeamMONASH in the Mother's Day Classic 8 km run around the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. This was the 10th anniversary of this event, with 22,000 participants raising money for Breast Cancer Research.

I noticed a lot of the runners were wearing a dedication card on the back of their shirts, with words to the effect of "I'm running for my mum" or "I'm running for Mrs. Jones", who presumably had suffered from breast cancer. I am very fortunate in that no women in my family have had breast cancer, minimizing my own risk factors considerably. So I ran the race without a dedication card, feeling blessed that I didn't have any names to write on one. However, I did bear in mind the possibility of having names to write down in the future, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to run in this event.

Other reasons for running in the event included seeing the Botanical Gardens (still on my Melbourne to-do list), running with a group of people from work, and proving to myself that I could do it - it is only seven years -and still fresh in my mind- since I made the decision to maximize my life expectancy by ceasing to be an overweight couch potato.

However, for various reasons I did not really have the time to train for this event. That's not to day that I am unfit, as I cycle 20 km most days and attend yoga classes regularly. I have previously run much greater distances (Sydney City to Surf 2004, 14 km in about 100 mins) but not in the last couple of years.

I ran most of the 8 km feeling fit enough in the cardiovascular sense, but with considerable muscle pain in my legs for the last 3 km. I worked through the pain, determined to finish. I crossed the finish line at 50 minutes and 22 seconds after sprinting the last 200 metres. I had great difficulty walking back to the team meeting area, but eventually made it.

The next day I almost fell over as I tried to get out of bed. The pain was excruciating, and I felt ridiculous about it - it was only 8 km dammit! Clearly I had been using muscles to run that I never use when cycling. I hobbled around for the next few days. I woke up this morning feeling much better.

I think I'm going to try and keep up the running at least once a week from now on to try and avoid this ridiculousness in the next event I enter.