And yet another...

The one thing about this Challenge was the number of firsts it was throwing up for me. Another first was to happen on the first day of my 4th successive week of double-headers. In the desire to be ahead going into the Christmas break, I was doing lots of back to back runs.

This one started with, as I have said, yet another first. I have often wondered how quick I would be walking a Half Marathon and this was my chance... as you were not allowed to run.

The second first was that this was a night Half Marathon, starting at the Auckland Domain at 8pm and winding through the streets of Auckland before heading back to the Domain.


This type of event is very popular overseas and with about 2000 entrants in it's first year in NZ, the same thing may happen here. I hopped up front with the race 'guide' Ian Maclean, determined to stay there as long as I could...  which was the whole race. We actually got passed by two walkers who both looked like they knew what they were doing and a runner (breaking the rules) who we actually passed again later.

Keeping Ian and I company were a very vocal bunch of 4 ladies who kept a constant conversation for the whole walk... well almost the whole walk.

After a bit of a loop around the Domain we spilled out onto Grafton Road... along we went, taking a right into Khyber Pass Road which flowed into Newton Road and gently into Ponsonby Road.

Ponsonby Road was a real buzz to walk down on a Saturday night, restaurants, bars and pedestrians cheering us on in our running (walking) gear with out balloons attached to our drink belts and backpacks. From there the road flowed nicely into Curran Road and all the way down and under the harbour Bridge at Westhaven.... then along Westhaven Road and round onto the waterfront real and Quay Street... again through the restaurants and bars at the Viaduct for another rousing welcome... then along past the wharves and into the Strand and Stanley Street and we were back at the entrance to the Domain.

Turning up the hill into the Domain I said to Ian lets push it... as we wanted a good time. So we drove hard up the hill and it went very quiet... the ladies had dropped off. We got around to the finish area to be told that we had another lap of the Domain to do yet and so on we went pushing as hard as we could while still walking.

In the end we crossed the line in 2:38:11 (10:38pm at night) with a moving time of 2:33:18 (we had to stop quite a few times for the traffic lights). All in all I was rapt... I had thought that anything under 3 hours would be a plus, so just over 2 and a half was great. A warm drink and a bite to eat and I headed out to Mission Bay for the start of my next race only a bit over 8 hours later.... fun!