The Neon Run

After we ran (mostly) the 10k Bridge to Brisbane in September, they advertised for the 5k Neon Run, which is a night run with lots of neon lights and disco music, and we thought ooh, that would be fun, let's do it!  And having spent the last few weeks desperately training so that I could run 5k without stopping (I did manage it once, pre-Neon) we read the event package they sent us last week and realised... well this was more of a have-fun-drink-beer-dance-to-an-open-air-disco-and-meander-5k than a run. 

Being very stubborn and determined people, we decided to still treat it like a run.  Having planned to run 5k, and having been timing ourselves and pushing ourselves and being generally horrible to our poor aching bodies, it was only right that we got to run 5k despite the odds.  The Neon Run organisers were strictly "we're not timing the run, it's just for fun" which didn't sound much like fun to us, because it's running so it's supposed to be really really painful - so Kurt used his new Garmin running watch, and I used my i-phone's GPS, and we religiously tracked and timed ourselves while attempting to dodge large groups of meandering walkers.

We (all 6,500 of us) were segregated into groups named after bands and singers, ours being "Coldplay", and we were about the tenth group called to start the run.  The first runners left at 1900, the event having been "opened" from 1700, including the bar.  We arrived at 1800 and ate pizza and corn-on-the-cob and bought neon shoelaces and found abandoned glowsticks to stick in our shoes and on our wrists.  Our "event package" included a battery powered neon bracelet which was sound activated (so the closer you got to the stage, the more it would blink, until it couldn't handle the noise any more and just remained on).

Finally, we started running.  Okay, it was only about 1920 at that stage, but as we were runners 4396 and 4397, you can imagine how many people were already on the course!  Most of these weren't running, so it was quite interesting and very frustrating at times, trying to duck, dodge and weave our way through the crowd - while trying very very hard to keep running.

Every km of the course they had a "station", whether it was a foam station - positioned precariously under a bridge next to the Brisbane River, with runners walkers standing around blocking the path so that you had to run on the very edge of the walkway... with a six foot embankment (about 60 degrees steep) into the river which if just one of these human obstacles took a step backwards at the wrong time... swim time and dinner for the bull sharks.

We survived.  But only just.

By about the 3rd kilometer, we had left the majority of these Incredibly Annoying People behind, and managed to go a bit faster.  My fastest kilometer was still only 6'12" but I was still pretty happy with that given the winding-ness of the course, and the 6498 other "non-competitors" we had to avoid.

As you can see, there is quite a marked difference between us pre-run and post-run !!!