On my 3rd day of work, one of the girls I work with asked if I ran. Of course my answer was “yes”. What else would it be?
(I keep answering yes even though I’ve heard Bob’s story about how he went running with his future wife in business school only to start sucking wind about a half mile in.)
Luckily she wasn’t asking me to start training for a marathon with her, but she did ask if I wanted to run with a Bain team in a 420 meter race on Sunday morning called “The Balmoral Burn”.
Since I didn’t have any plans on Sunday morning, I agreed. How hard could a ¼ mile run actually be? What they neglected to mention was that the run was up the steepest hill in Sydney at about a 30-degree incline. Those words still didn’t really mean much to me, and even when I saw the hill it wasn’t that intimidating.
Then I started running. I was actually somewhat nervous going into the race. I was in the “open” division, and there were about 80 or so people in my heat. When the race started it and I looked up the hill, I was in the middle of the pack, but I knew I could run faster. I started going at a good clip, and got to the top 5-8.
I was able to hang there for awhile, but then I got to the steepest part of the hill. There’s a reason that the race was called the “burn”. With ~120 meters to go, everything go tight – my legs, my lungs, even my arms. I don’t really know how that happened since all I was doing was running. By the time I made it to the finish line, at 2:03 in 16th place, I felt horrible and keeled over, along with the rest of the runners.
In retrospect, I’m really glad I did it even though I didn’t feel like myself for another 3 hours after the race. Just when I started to feel proud of my finish, the Elite heat went off and the Australian Olympian in the 800m ripped off a time of 1:23 – a whole 40 seconds better than me. That was just a testament to how incredible professional athletes are. Needless to say, he did not collapse.
(I keep answering yes even though I’ve heard Bob’s story about how he went running with his future wife in business school only to start sucking wind about a half mile in.)
Luckily she wasn’t asking me to start training for a marathon with her, but she did ask if I wanted to run with a Bain team in a 420 meter race on Sunday morning called “The Balmoral Burn”.
Since I didn’t have any plans on Sunday morning, I agreed. How hard could a ¼ mile run actually be? What they neglected to mention was that the run was up the steepest hill in Sydney at about a 30-degree incline. Those words still didn’t really mean much to me, and even when I saw the hill it wasn’t that intimidating.
Then I started running. I was actually somewhat nervous going into the race. I was in the “open” division, and there were about 80 or so people in my heat. When the race started it and I looked up the hill, I was in the middle of the pack, but I knew I could run faster. I started going at a good clip, and got to the top 5-8.
I was able to hang there for awhile, but then I got to the steepest part of the hill. There’s a reason that the race was called the “burn”. With ~120 meters to go, everything go tight – my legs, my lungs, even my arms. I don’t really know how that happened since all I was doing was running. By the time I made it to the finish line, at 2:03 in 16th place, I felt horrible and keeled over, along with the rest of the runners.
In retrospect, I’m really glad I did it even though I didn’t feel like myself for another 3 hours after the race. Just when I started to feel proud of my finish, the Elite heat went off and the Australian Olympian in the 800m ripped off a time of 1:23 – a whole 40 seconds better than me. That was just a testament to how incredible professional athletes are. Needless to say, he did not collapse.
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