The Wet n Wild Orewa
I planned on wearing this ….
Flat Julia ready and “raring”” to go
But the weather gods had other plans! It rained constantly and the wind! OMG! It was so bad, that the event organizers called off the prize giving because quite frankly no one wanted to hang around!
Thankfully I’d been to Lululemon the day prior and had just purchased a running vest for the upcoming winter (I hate anything with long sleeves, in fact I’m not even that keen on short sleeves!) so I ended up wearing this …
Glad I had the foresight to buy a running vest!
You can’t tell from the photos, but James ran with me. His event was an hour before mine and it only took him 46 minutes so, he figured that instead of standing around getting cold (and wetter), he’d just jog alongside me and keep me company (we have him to thank for the course photos).
It was slightly disconcerting when he found me seeking refuge near the start line and told me that he thought I should flag it because my shoes were going to get saturated (there were large channels of water to cross) and it would be really hard going on my knee.
However I’d been standing in the rain for 30 minutes by then so even if I had to walk the entire route, I was going to finish that darn 5k!
James and I (at the back) making our way to the start
I’ve been worried about this run a couple of weeks – would my knee hold out? What am I going to do if I can’t even run 5k?
As such I planned to take things conservatively with a 30:30 run/walk interval and regardless of how good I felt I would not lengthen the running intervals OR shorten the walking intervals because I do have a tendency to feel good then push it too far.
Following the program
To be honest, I was surprised how good my knee felt and both James and I were surprised how non caring I was about sloshing through all the water. Although, what I hate about the ground being wet is it gets slippery, but that doesn’t happen on sand so I had no reason to hesitate.
I’m not sure if it was because the course was flat, or if it was the sand, or the intervals (or perhaps it was a combination of the three) but my knee didn’t grump once. And although this was THE wettest, windiest and slowest 5k I’ve ever done – It was the best day ever!
Run & Done 41:15
I’m really excited about getting stuck into trail run training now!
Till next time
For those of you who don’t follow me on snapchat here is the event in “snaps”