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Saturday 26 December 2015

Run 10: Glynneath 5 Mile (Fun Run)

Saturday, 26th December 2015 (11:00am)

Christmas Day is a day of excess; presents, food, chocolate, sweets, wine, mince pies, beer, more wine, turkey, and regrets. The day often ends slightly comatose on the sofa with some routine Christmas telly on the go.

Boxing Day is a day of either recovery from the day before or further excess. It's certainly not the day for running. Or so I thought.

I signed up to the Glynneath 5 because I wanted to do a run over the festive period, I didn't want to stray too far from home and it was the easiest one to fit in to my schedule.
Feeling fresh and festive!

As the run wasn't quite 10 kilometres, I looked at it as a fun run of sorts and made sure to acquire a Santa costume to complete the run in. Upon arriving at the registration HQ for the event I quickly realised that I was the only one who had opted for fancy dress. Appearances from a number of different running clubs suggested that this was an event people took quite seriously.


After getting my race number and making my way to the starting line, I handed my coat to my brother (who very kindly sacrificed a lie-in on boxing day to drive me to Glynneath) and started my warm-ups. A lone Santa amongst lycra-clad running pros attracted quite a bit of attention and one of the organisers applauded my efforts and very vaguely promised a trophy at the awards ceremony after the race (which unfortunately I didn't have time to stay for - so no trophy!).





The thing that struck me the most about this run was the community spirit of it. As an annual event, it is obviously very cherished by the community and lots of people knew each other and wanted to improve upon previous years times. In fact, the event was almost an advert for running clubs. They were everywhere, and everyone was having a great time. If my life weren't so fluid I'd love to join a running club but that's a story for a different time.

The run itself was flat and the scenery not as inspiring as other parts of Glynneath but it was a good run and it showed me that I was a little out of shape (or that running with a hot, sweaty, fuzzy Santa costume is out of my comfort zone).



Close to the end (Images courtesy of Glynneath 5's facebook account)

Everyone on the track (it was a 2.5 mile road run and then back) was very encouraging shouting inspired things like "Go on Santa" and "Now you've emptied your sack, you can do it!"

My average for a 10km is around 45 minutes.
My time for this 8km was 43:01 - rather disappointing in fact, but in my defense - IT WAS A FUN RUN! And it was, I had a great time, and I would really recommend this run.



2 comments:

  1. I bet you had reindeer pulling you for half the run. ;-)

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  2. The last photo is amazing - you look so out of place next to the other guy.

    ReplyDelete