City to Bay

Well I have had requests to blog about my first venture into the wonderful world of the City to Bay Fun Run, held each year in Adelaide.

I convinced Him and Jr Her to come along with me, but decided the full 12km of the "run" would be too much, so we decided to enter the 6km "walk". As the main road across the middle of Adelaide would be closed, we opted to leave our cars early. We left one close to the finish line (so we thought anyway) and the other close to the start line at the local shopping centre.

We arrived bright and early, decked out in our electronic tags, comfy shoes, and comfy clothes (although for Jr Her that meant jeans and a jumper, silly chick). We loaded Him's pockets up with keys, and the eftpos card just in case and made our way through the throng to the start line, about 90 minutes early.

Luckily, amid the strange weather we have been having lately, we had lovely sun with a rather nippy breeze for the walk. We watched all the 12km runners jog past, then they started the 6km runners. Once they had left, we still had about half an hour before they unleashed us walkers onto the road.

We set off in a tightly packed field amid thousands of others (approx 28,000 people entered this year) and made our way down Anzac Highway. We had a pretty good pace going, but Him soon found himself in front of us. We kept him in our sights, but Jr Her and I kept our own pace going. She is hard to walk beside sometimes as she seems to have no concept of "personal space" and keeps bumping into/stepping on me.

We chatted about the people we saw, stuff, and the like, and she didn't complain (for once). I was very proud of her actually. For all her athleticism, she hates walking. Considering she used to walk an hour a day with me when she was six, she hates walking for ten minutes now.

Him kept stopping and waiting for us to catch up, but he was soon ahead again. We didn't mind. I didn't want to push her too much, she did mention once or twice that I was walking a bit fast for her.

It took us an hour and ten to walk 6km. Not a bad effort I thought. It is embarrassing however when you are overtaken by elderly folk. But we didn't mind. The weather was lovely and we just enjoyed the experience.

Well, when we got to Glenelg Him let us catch up to him, and we went through the last km together. We had decided we would all pass under the finish banner together, and we did. Then, we made our way out of the compound, and decided while we were walking we would continue back the way we came to KFC for a drink and bite to eat. After sitting for half an hour or so it was very difficult to get up again, but we had to walk another km or so back to where we had parked the car!

We did, then took some videos back, and took that car back to the shopping centre to pick up the other car. Him left us at that point (chicken) and Jr her and I went shopping. She is going on a Girl Guides camp and needed track pants, so we found KMart had a buy one, get 60% off the next sale. We bought six items, and three of those were very cheap, like the boardies which were originally $16.99 and we paid $6.80, the top which had been reduced to $10 which we bought for $5.80, and the lovely white hoodie which scanned at $2, with the discount cost 80c! We still spent $100 but saved heaps more on top of that - the $10 top was originally $35 and the hoodie was originally $30. Gotta love a bargain!

Then we went home and vegged all afternoon. I spent the afternoon sitting outside reading, Jr Her watched videos and Him napped in the couch. What better way to wind down! We are really looking forward to next year now. See if we can beat our time. Oh, and apparently we can buy the photos from tomorrow. Might just have to do that...