Its That Time of the Year ...... Again......

Well, in my last post I showed you that I have been trying to get myself fit, or fitter at least. Well this is the time of the year when Digicel (Our biggest mobile phone network provider) and the Digicel Foundation host their annual 5 Kilometer Walk/Run event to raise funds for children with special needs.

Being as I had only started back in the gym in the August, the thought of running a 5K in October was kind of daunting but at the time I was working out and being put through my paces by my friend Oneal who doesn't really give up when it comes to training. So my company Stewarts is a big supporter of several charities and organizations and they just happen to enter a corporate team each year which I became part of......

Originally, given my state of fitness I decided that I would take the WALK option, but, Oneal had different ideas and we embarked on what became a merciless training regime. Here's the route in Downtown Kingston.

Actually, the route is not too bad when you see it and its a fairly flat run. The event is held in the evening at 7:30 so its kind of cooled off a bit by then and its around 30 degrees. 

So I'm lined up at the start with about 6000 other people and we are split into 2 sides, Runners and Walkers wearing my electronically tagged number 2575 and surrounded by the rest of the Stewarts team and with Oneal & Karim another friend behind us, Off we go. WOOOOOSH!!!! suddenly everybody I know has disappeared into the crowd and I'm on my own jogging along thinking "What just happened there?" At that point I thought o.k. lets just get on with it and do my best. With a run walk run walk technique I finally finished the course, and the result..........

A very happy 31 minutes and 18 seconds verified electronically by GPS :-), that's a pace of around a mile every 10 minutes, I had no idea of the time initially and I had to wait for the official time to be published online and I was sweating it a bit because I didn't want to be embarrassed in front of the team so when I saw the final time I was STOKED :-) 

Well, as the title of this post suggests, "It's that time of year again" and the Digicell 5K is on the 11th October. That gives me 5 weeks to get back into shape to try and at least beat my previous time but in reality I would like to do a sub-30 minutes this time, without giving myself a heart attack of course :-)

Time will tell and we shall see...... oh yeah, Oneal on the left, me in the middle and Karim on the right.

And Some of the Stewarts Team

From Left, "Lenny" "Me" "Morgy" & "Flair"

More to come.............