Sunday 9 March 2008

The thirteen minute mile.



This morning was the Adidas International Women’s Day fun run. At 7.30 am, 5000 Brisbane women, of all ages, shapes and sizes, gathered at South Bank to run and walk to support the Surf Life Saving Association.

I had entered the race several weeks ago with the grand plan of training regularly for the day. Time passed, work interfered and two days ago I was thinking, is the 9th this weekend?!

The zimble is not known for its running ability. A wombat runs with greater speed and style. True to form, my school report card always said, “physical education: tries hard”. This was correct, in a sort of a fashion, if you could classify habitual falls and repetitive near drownings as enthusiastic participation.

Nevertheless, the passage of time and some, perhaps foolhardy optimism can make up for a great deal of ineptitude and so there I was this morning, running shoes on, the Bee Gees singing "Staying Alive' on my iPod and 5 km of fun run ahead.

The winner whipped around the riverside course in 17 minutes. My sister ran a very creditable 27 minutes. My time was 40 minutes and yes, as hard as it is to believe, I did run the whole way. This 40 minutes is 8 minutes per km, 4.6 miles per hour, 7.5 km/h and very, very slow. It's any wonder I wasn't mistaken for an arthritic tortoise. Next time I'll listen to some Rogue Traders. You never know. It might help.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done E3165/Zimble! By my calculation you smashed the 13 minute mile by 7.5 seconds. :-)

Zimble: said...

Thanks BM! Wait till next time - I'll take it out really hard and aim to go sub-39! Imagine that!!

R :-)