The run for Val poster turned up on my Facebook newsfeed last week and I thought – heck why not, especially after seeing that you get free stuff, heck I’ll run for some free stuff.

I cajoled a couple of the epic adventurers into joining me, Anna because well she’s a runner and Iz because Iz and I are prepping for our Island Adventure and need to be bikini ready in 8 weeks and running will obviously help with that.

Win win situation really, free stuff AND burning some excess flab off!

Iz and I walked the 5k to “race headquarters” aka The Nike Platinum store in Newmarket, signed up, dropped our gear off and donned our official Race for Val shirts (not bad for free right!!!)

Oh and we obviously checked in on Facebook, it’s not official until it’s on Facebook 😉

Due to our combined epic adventuring injuries and niggles Iz, Anna and I all planned on doing the 5k course. This is the course and maps were available at the store so you could familiarize yourself with the course which we did not *mistake one*.

Anna was going to run *fast* as she isn’t allowed to run for more than 20 minutes. I was going to plod at Julia pace and because Iz was going to keep me company she was basically going to walk beside me. 😉

We broke up into groups – the 5k group walked down the road (so we would run past the shop) and the 8k’s started at the shop and then off we set ..

The angel wings on the back of the shirts made it pretty easy to follow the bunch and we figured we could just follow the people in our group .. *mistake two*

The course was an out and back run – when our GPS said we had been 2.8k we were on the look out for the turn around point, but it never came, we kept running thinking it can’t be far off *mistake three*

Next thing you know a Race Marshall comes sprinting down the road (well he was probably running at the speed runners, run at) telling the people if they were in the 5k run to turn around because we should have been told to go down a completely different road and we were in fact on the 8k route.

See that big black line?  That’s the where the 5k group should have gone.  See that red line?  That’s where we were!

Most of the runners turned,   however by then we had done 3.4k so Iz and I thought heck we might as well keep going and do the 8k route.  Which for us would end up being more like 8.7 because we started behind the ACTUAL 8k start line.

Moral of the story ..

1. Look at the course route
2. Look at the course route
3. Look at the course route

I made it back under my own steam.  I did walk a couple of sections on some big arse hill but considering I was planning on running 5k and It was my first run for months it wasn’t as disastrous as it could have been – believe me!

And there was the free wattle bottle waiting for me at the finish line … I did tell you I will run for free stuff!

And Val – I ran for Val as well ..

And in return Val won us a silver medal at the Olympics in the shot put .. how’s that for a return on investment!

Till next time