The premise is simple, you run around a track for 33 1/3 mns (33 mns 20 secs) and see how many revolutions (laps) of the track you can do in that time. As it was organised by folks from my running club, and our club's tagline is "A cake club with a running problem!!!", there was also a cake making competition thrown in too. This year's run was in aid of local charity, Cruse Bereavement Care South East Scotland.
http://www.crusescotland.org.uk/Support/south_east_scotland.html
The run was held at Meadowbank Stadium which was a perfect venue for this race. I meet up with my club for runs there a couple of times a week but it was the first time I'd had a chance to run on the actual track that was home to the 1970 and 1986 Commonwealth games.
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| The girls and me before the run (Norah was more interested in Tess's Iphone at this point) |
Tess and the girls came along to support and to have a go at running around the track too. There was also a selection of tunes from the 60's, 70's and 80's being played over the loudspeakers to keep everyone motivated as they ran around the track. We had great fun taking part in the pre race aerobics session where I discovered my daughters were far better co-ordinated than me.
There was around 60-70 runners taking part so we were split into an inner and outer group, with the inner group running in lanes 1-4 and the outside group running in lanes 5-8. We were started by a stalwart of the Edinburgh running scene, "Barry the gun".
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| Ears covered for the loud bang and we're under way (photo copyright Bob Marshall) |
I knew beforehand that I wasn't going to be treating this as a proper race as I was planning on running with the kids as much as I could and generally having fun and working up an appetite for the cake to follow. I had thought that if I could manage 14/15 laps (around 8-8:30 mm pace) I'd be happy.
Everyone was responsible for counting the number of laps they had run but as a checking mechanism you had to pick up an elastic band at the end of each lap which were counted and verified at the end to make sure you had run the number of laps you had claimed. This was a great idea as by the end of the 2nd or 3rd lap I'd lost count already.
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| 10 minutes done, picking up another elastic band (photo copyright Bob Marshall) |
With so many people running at different paces I was overtaking some runners and others were overtaking me so there was always someone to chat to on the way around and the time just flew by. The girls ran to various parts of the track and held my hand and ran along with me for a bit which was great fun.
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| Me being towed along by Lizzie and Erin (photo copyright Bob Marshall) |
When Europe's "The Final Countdown" started to play I knew we were nearing the end so I tried to get to the end of the lap for one last elastic band. The gun went off and we stopped where we were and the marshals came around with a measuring wheel to see how far we'd got past a full lap to calculate our total distance. I managed 15 full laps and 40 metres which I was very surprised and happy with considering I'd run along with the girls for quite a bit.
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| Tess and the girls looking on as I get my final distance (photo copyright Bob Marshall) |
Once the distances were totalled up we headed in for cake and coffee and the results. Both the men's and women's races were won by runners from our club which was a very popular result and for which they received an edible winners medal and a classic LP. Spot prizes were also awarded for runners closest to 33 1/3, 45 and 78 years of age and for various categories of cake, and I can personally vouch for several of them which were delicious.
It was a really lovely, well organised, fun event which I thoroughly enjoyed. Looking forward to next year already. Well done to everybody involved in the organisation, it went really well.
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| At the finish, looking slightly redder in the face than earlier |
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