Some brave msp staffers took part in the gruelling Manchester Urbanathlon this weekend, raising money for our charity of the year, St Ann's Hospice. Over 900 runners took part in this 3rd annual Manchester Urbanathlon, tackling obstacles around iconic east Manchester.
Some of the participants were moved to write a blog chronicling their experiences...
[Martin] As I parked the car near the start of the race, I watched as a number of exhausted-looking runners went past. “Pathetic, they’ve only just started.” I said disdainfully, “They’re obviously not used to exercise.”
[Brendan] After a five minute warm up with a very enthusiastic personal trainer type we were ushered over to what the announcer called the ‘holding area’. This turned out to be the start of the race rather than some kind of holding pen for cattle.
[Nodumo] The countdown to our send-off began and away we went promising to keep together in case one of us needed help.
[Lee] And it was at this point I saw my life flash before my eyes, and began to question, will I see my wife again? Will I ever see City win a worthwhile trophy? Am i just over-reacting?
[Brendan] At 2pm we set off at a steady pace and hurdled over plastic barriers and concrete blocks while dodging some small children who had randomly joined the race.
We then entered the City of Manchester stadium for a run up the seemingly endless pathway that spirals round and round to the top of the stadium. As we ran through the outer edge of the stadium Lee and I couldn’t resist jogging up the steps for a quick peak at the stadium, which was very impressive indeed. By the time we had gone back down the other side and out to the car park I was already feeling pretty shattered.
[Martin] I remembered my earlier words as I reached the same stage , about 1 km in, lungs bursting and legs wobbling.
[Brendan] We crossed more concrete blocks and barriers and then ran through a muddy wooded area which revealed three long narrow tubes that we had to crawl through. As they were too narrow to make any use of your legs I ended up hauling myself along with my elbows. Other highlights on the way to Philips Park were a pile of hay bails stacked like staircase about 15 feet high, a bouncy castle style obstacle course with holes to jump through and things to clamber over, and a low course of netting to crawl across. We then ran past the canal and along a main road, pleased to hear that we were over half way to the end of the course.
The sense of relief was enormous when I reached Phillips Park and saw a sign saying “500 metres”. The speed and energy of the other two members of my team, Lee and Martin had pushed me pretty hard and I walked for a minute of so to gather my energy for the final straight. As I jogged towards the finish, the rock climbing wall up ahead was a pretty daunting sight. It turned out to be a little easier than it looked though and once I was down the other side I was less than 100 metres from the finish. I sprinted up to the two derelict cars and landed on the bonnet with quite some force, thinking to myself “when am I going to have the opportunity to do this to a car again?”
When I crossed the finish line just behind Lee and Martin I was amazed to find that the time was only 2:25. It had felt like a lot longer to us all and we certainly hadn’t been planning on finishing it in that time. Having been handed copious leaflets, including a taster session in rock climbing that afternoon would you believe, I finally lay down on the grass to recover.
[Lee] Having finished in such a respectable time, my concerns were unjustified. Bring on charity event number 3!
[Nodumo] I felt my body breathe a sigh of relief or rather disbelief that we done it in under 30 minutes. At this point we all concurred that we had clocked ample mileage for charity this year including the delightful midnight walk of course.
The results of the 2010 Urbanathlon are now up on the Urbanathlon website - turns out we were about three minutes slower than we were told on the day!:
The two msp teams finished 11th and 18th out of the 20 corporate teams in the event with combined team times of 86 minutes and 110 minutes respectively. John of msp Team 2 did particularly well to finish the race given that he injured his leg in the first few minutes.
http://www.urbanathlon.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=117&Itemid=127
Individual results are available here:
http://www.urbanathlon.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=105
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