Over the last 18 months  or so I have reignited my love of running. It had been 10 years since I was last seriously running. Then it was to get fit enough for a job I thought I wanted.

This time I started running to improve my fitness, during the first few months as I built up to being able to run 5km  in one go I came across parkrun. parkrun organise free, weekly, 5km timed runs around the world. They are open to everyone, free, and are safe and easy to take part in. I have now completed 68 parkruns. This seemed perfect, 5km was my happy distance, it didn’t take too much effort or too long to finish.

Of course after a few months of running 5-6km a few times a week I started thinking about maybe running a bit further. I decided that 10km was my next goal. To keep me on track I registered for the Melbourne Marathon Festival’s 10km event. I slowly increased the distance of my runs until the week before the 10km event. This was also my first running event other than the weekly parkrun.

The big day came around and I duly lined up with the other 7500 10km runners. It was a pretty good run, the last km seemed to go forever as you run past the entry to the stadium (MCG) where the race finishes and keep going for 1/2 a km before turning back. That was the longest km! Once you run into the stadium the crowd and venue give you the kick to pickup the pace until the finish line. Time 63:08.