de-doo-run-run: Koputaroa 21.1km, Levin

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Koputaroa 21.1km, Levin - 16 October 2011

At the start. About 30 participants in the half marathon run. Almost clear skies after a very rainy morning.

Yet again, it was pouring with rain throughout the night. If we hadn't pre-entered, a bomb would not have got me out of bed. I was so not looking forward to a drenched run.

Koputaroa School in the country not far from Levin.

As we drove to Levin, the rain started clearing (again, aren't we lucky devils!), but my mood was for some reason "under the weather". I just couldn't imagine myself having to run 21 kms … We fetched our entries in the Koputaroa School hall and made our way to the start, which is just outside the hall in the road in front of the school. The race only started at 9:30 and as we lined up with about 30 other participants, the organiser briefed us about the route.

The course is a double lapper mainly on country roads. Two short sections are run on SH1 and SH57 respectively. It is a very scenic and beautiful run among farms which at first glance can be rated as undulating. But once I started on the second lap I decided that it is hilly. It could just be my bad mood, thought, that made it feel tougher that what it was? :-)

Wonderful quiet country roads. The perfect setting for any long run.

All in all a great outing. Unfortunately it turned out a very "lonely" run for the two of us as we only saw some other runners in the first kilometre of two. Thereafter it was just us. We knew that one or two runners were still behind us, but far enough that we couldn't see them. Same goes for the ones in front of us.

A friend always uses the expression that he feels "tired as old toast". Well, I had the same problem. We finished in 2:15:38, faster that what I expected. A very nice event which I didn't appreciate at the time. Not sure how on earth I'm going to run a marathon in two weeks time ...