I dragged myself out of bed at some ungodly hour this morning so I could get to the registration desk for The Great Escape run. Arrived too early as usual and then had to perform jumping jacks for about 2 hours to ward off hypothermia while we waited for the finance society to organise 400 runners who had pre-registered anyway.
I think its a bad idea to do races organised by finance societies but my excuse is that I misread the flyer and thought it said fitness society, a group that I expect would know something about running and routes and the importance of water and goody bags with goodies in.
The start was shambolic, they insisted on splitting the tiny running crowd into 2 waves thereby seperating running buddies, not that my buddy had any intention of hanging around me - the speedy git! The first km marker appeared at 750m which irritates me but seems like a common ploy on these charity runs. The 5km marker with the promised water never materialised, thankfully I carried my own anyway but I wouldn’t have minded a top up.
The 6km zone was populated by the St Johns Ambulance crew but no one to point the way which led to runners heading off in three different directions. I realised my choice was wrong because I only had about 500 m left to the start/finish and my watch was still at 7km, at this point I headed off-road and tried to pick up another track where I found runners moving in both directions. In the end I gave up and just headed for the finish to get it over and done with. I had a slight panic that I would actually be the first one in and I’d be awarded a medal and then have to admit to only running 8km and pushing into the first wave rather than my allotted 2nd but I needn’t have worried - there were plenty of grumbling runners milling around arguing about the route and the complete lack of organisation.
No cheering or support at the finish line but I think thats because the marshalls hadn’t got a clue which direction to expect the runners to be coming from. In fairness they were friendly enough but I would recommend they go and volunteer at BPTT and see how the real organisers manage a race before they think about repeating it next year.
Now the goody bag:
- Capital - The Official Magazine of The Imperial College Finance Society
- A biro
- 2 rubber bracelets thingy’s
- A leaflet explaining how I could impress an attractive person at dinner who claims to be an investment banker
- A sweet - v.small
- A chocolate biscuit that tasted of aniseed although it might have been OGB’s lynx as he was spraying his pits as I was eating
- Oh and a t-shirt which was just too impressive for words, but lets say it hasn’t inspired me to start my own t-shirt page.
I can only hope that a good proportion of my £22 entry fee went to the charity.
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