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Thursday 17 April 2014

It was Mega... but it wasn't a Walk!

So, after the Taniwha it was back to Rotorua and rest, then up very early for the drive to Napier for the second run of the weekend the Mitre 10 Megawalk... which was not a walk for me, but a run.

The other thing about this run was that it was 28km... a step up from the long procession of Half Marathons that I had been running. So I made it to Napier early... a bit too early it turned out as I got there before anyone else. But eventually everyone showed up and we all hopped on the bus to Hastings for the start line.

This race ran from Mitre 10 Mega in Hastings to Mitre 10 Mega in Napier.

We got away pretty much on time, I was only cruising at the start trying to ease out the aches and pains from Saturday and trying to conserve energy. The first few km's were through the streets of Hastings and then onto the cycleway that runs all the way to Napier.

This was another of those events where another person made it a fun run where it could have been a drudge and a struggle.

Trevor (previously from Middlesborogh, now in Napier) passed me early on, then I passed him, then he caught me up again... saying "Am I getting faster or you getting slower?" in this case he was getting faster as I was trudging along at a pretty steady pace.

Turns out the furthest he has run is 15km and the furthest on road is 10km (though he has done a few Duathlons) ... so we ran together, my Garmin making sure he didn't get too quick (his target was 2:45) and making sure I didn't go too slow.



There were a couple of quite cool things in this race... one was the fact that nearly all of the run was on the cycleway and so we were well away from the traffic. The other was that the shorter races both started after we had passed their start lines... meaning we go to run the gauntlet to big rounds of applause at both starts... this was quite neat and a first for me during a race.

Running with Trevor made the km's cruise by, in the end we ran together for about the last 18km give or take. This took us off the trail from Hastings to the sea and onto the concrete pathway along Marine Parade.

 
Past the Aquarium and all the well known Napier landmarks. Then through the Harbour area, past the fishing wharves and finally back through the streets to the end.

For the last 5 to 6km I did my bit to keep Trevor moving at the right pace as he was starting to feel the pinch. He kept urging me to go, but I had really enjoyed my day, so said no way and stayed by his side. In the end we stayed together to the very end and finished in a pleasing time of 2:37.








The race had one final nasty wee bite... Mitre 10 Mega is on a reasonably major corner and on that corner is a busy roundabout... so they couldn't let us cross straight over to the finish. Which meant that after 27 and a bit kilometres we got to run straight past the finish line over the road and carry on away from it for about 400m... then we crossed over and headed back to a happy finish.

 

So the company and the people around us made for a great day on a mix of surfaces, but still way more concrete than I would like!

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