Going round the bays

Late last year, Annalie signed up for the annual Wellington 7km "fun run", so named "Round the Bays" because it hugs the coastline from the city centre, round to Kilbirnie, taking in the likes of Oriental Bay and Evans Bay along the way. This would be the longest distance she'd ever run, having only ever done the 5km Race for Life events in the UK before.

So she duly set about training and even managed a few runs while in the UK over Christmas.

With two weeks left to go, Ian won a free race entry himself, but he had done no training whatsoever to this point. Cue a mad scramble to get at least a few runs in before the 26th February run.

And so race day came. We were desperately hoping that the wind, which has been showing its strength a lot over summer, was not on show. Or if it was, that it was a northerly, considering that our general direction was heading south. View a map of the route here.

Luckily for us, it turned into a still morning with bright blue skies. A perfect day for the run.

Our friends Toby and Jo gave us a lift to the start and watched us get increasingly nervous. Us and 12,000 other people! The event sold out for the fist time in its history. We like to think it's because people heard we were taking part for the first time ;-)

To give you an idea of the size of the event, here's some photos of the start.

Despite his lack of training, Ian surged past a lot of people early on to get in the clear while Annalie maintained a steady pace throughout the race. Ian was intent on beating 60 minutes and Annalie had a goal of 45 based on her training.

We'll leave the race results to tell their own story. You can see the stats for Ian and Annalie individually, including where they finished and where they were percentage-wise. There are also photos of Ian and Annalie online.

It was a good event all round and gave us both something to think about/aim for next year. Although there is now talk of a potential half marathon appearance...