GCWCC 5km Charity Run!

On Thursday, October 6th, I (Alex) participated in the Government of Canada's 5km charity run for the United Way.  With only a couple of training runs for preparation, I set out with two colleagues.  We set a goal-time of 25 minutes, which was a challenging pace for us (based on our one previous group run).




With the excitement of the crowds and music at the starting line, we came out of the gate at a fast pace.  We managed to maintain it throughout, although I began to struggle after the 2km mark.  The primary motivation to continue was our pact, to finish the run together.  Peter, in our group, was very much a natural runner and Tyler and I did our utmost to keep up with him.

Towards the end, we were both exchanging glances and breathing very heavily, but Peter seemed as if he could continue indefinitely at this pace!  Closing on the finish line and crossing it was a great feeling, only surpassed by the relief of immediately lying down on the grassy field, completely light-headed for a few minutes as I regained my breath.

We were all very excited to beat our goal time.  My 'chip-time', from gate to gate, was 22:42!  This was only slightly outshadowed by the truly elite runners, one of whom ran it in just over 17 minutes!  Check out this link for the finish times: http://www.sportstats.ca/display-results.php?lang=eng&racecode=100977&lboard=Overall&sortby=place  Our finish placed us at the 70th percentile of the runners, which we were happy about given our limited training.

I've included a pic, below, of us guys (I'm in black) during the run as we passed by the Evaluation Services colleagues who were doing the 2.5km walk.




Tannys and I are now preparing to run another 5km charity run - in Orlando, Florida!  We will be there for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine's annual conference and will be running to support a fertility charity.  On Saturday we completed a 5km training run, and will attempt to get in another run or two before doing that event.

- Alex