This has got to be my favourite race to date. Yep it beat out the Disney World and the Disneyland Half marathons. How can it not? 2.5km round the Cadbury Estate. A bag of chocolate at the end. And it started at 10:00am not some before the sun rises ungodly hour. Did I mention it was only 2.5km?
Before
The Cadbury Marathon is actually in its 28th year. Hubby and I are certainly not ready for a marathon or a half marathon. That left the 2.5km or the 1.25km. Even for us out of shape non runners the 1.25km would have been a cop out.
Our friend David H run in the Half Marathon and he finished before our race even started. 1hr 46 mins for 21km. That's pretty awesome.
His daughter Meg, ran the 2.5km with us. Ummm, yeah, let me rephrase that. Meg lined up with us at the start line. Then she left both hubby and I for dead. Miss Meg (11) finished a good 3 minutes ahead of either of us. Go Meg! (Mum, Sharyn made us all lunch including homemade ice cream and slushies)
The official results probably won't be published until later in the week, but the runkeeper app on my iPhone says:
2.47 km - the course was too short. Where's Mr Wilson?*
15:51 mins
Average pace of 6:25min/km. Are you kidding me? That's fast for me. The 5km I did in November was 7:55min/km. I doubt that I could maintain the faster pace for 5km. I was ready to curl up and die at the end of the run today. And it was hot. Who runs a race in the middle of the morning in summer. Not the brightest idea I've ever had, but at least it was short.
after
Hubby was ahead of me, I think he finished in around 15 mins. He did really well. He's still fairly early in the Couch to 5km and his longest run interval to do has been 5mins. So to run 15 mins is pretty impressive.
After being congratulated by Freddo Frog and Caramello Koala and receiving our Cadbury bags, we found some shade and watched the prize givings. Nah, we weren't race winners, so no $ or chocolate gift baskets for us.
But we both won spot prizes. Hubby's number was called and he won a box of chocolates. About 10 people later my number was called. I won a new pair of Mizuno running shoes. Woohoo!
The best part? We got to go shopping in the employee store. We bought $50.00 worth of chocolate. Don't worry. It's not all for us. Some of it, will show up in birthday and Christmas presents. So act surprised if you get some.
*Have you seen "The Games", the episode about the 100m track being only 96m?
I just found the preliminary official results on the race website.
Meg was 45th in 13 mins 16 secs
Dave was 56th in 15 mins 08 secs
I was 62nd in 15 mins 49 secs
David H was 43rd in the half marathon (out of 422) in 1hr 46 mins 53 secs