The YMCA Marathon Running Club puts on a womens only fun run each year in May and this years event was the 34th!

It’s a really low key event (no timing chips) and as such the entry fee is very low. The event attracts women of all ages, shapes, ethnicity and fitness levels.

The oldest person in the field was 84! (I know this because they had a multitude of “categories” at prize giving one of them being the oldest competitor, and the woman that won it was older than the next oldest person by one month). I have a few small gripes about the prize giving but I’ll discuss that a little later.

I can’t remember how I found out about this event. I have a feeling someone posted a link on Facebook and I shared it and one thing lead to another and the FBs had signed up and where the FBs go I “follow”.

Unfortunately between signing up and race day my knee got more farked up than its usually farked up state and I could no longer run. I hummed and harred and then settled on swapping to the walk. I still had 100k’s to log for the month of May and I’d paid for the event so I thought I may as well go along anyway and clock up some mileage.

These two unfortunate souls swapped from the run to the walk to keep me company ..

The rest of the group were running. Clare and Izzy did the 5k and Robin represented the FBs in the 10k event.

The runners blitzed the course. Iz and Clare did under 30 for the 5k and Robin did the 10k in under an hour. My little walking trio (which became a quintet when Iz and Clare joined us for the second loop) did the 10k is 1:36:45 (thank you girls for having your GPS apps on).

After the run we sat down and waited around for prize giving so that one of us could take home the trip to Australia ..

Which brings me back to my prize giving “gripes” ..

It was loooong –

They seemed to have a trillion categories like oldest person, brightest top, fastest skirt, first person who entered the event, nicest lunch (ok that one I made up, but you get the idea) AND with all those multitude of categories they didn’t have Best Socks! Because you know I would have won that one hands down! 😉

They held the prizegiving in the carpark – what a waste of all that nice soft squishy grass.

And finally (and this one will be Yumi’s biggest gripe) – none of us won a prize ..

Next year I am going to put my entry in the day of the event, wear a skirt, recruit an elderly person into the FBs and run really fast.  All bases covered 😉

Till next time