I have now completed my 2nd race of 2012 and absolutely loved it.

On Thursday I collected my race number and temporary licence.  I was very confused as to why I needed a temporary licence for a 5km event as I was always under the impression it is only needed for 10km and longer.  After much Twitter debate, it was discovered that this event an officially timed road race and therefore temporary licences are required (thanks to @BigBradBrown, for the answer).

So this morning my alarm goes off at 3:55am (yes that is before the sun rises).  I get up, get clean, have something to eat and head out to pick up my running mate (@sheldondelport) for today’s event.

I was warned that there will be thousands of people, well 6000 people entered the 21km event and I wasn’t sure how many for 5km, so Sheldon and I arrived nice and early.  Already there was a traffic build up.  So I found a parking lot about 1.5km from the start and we walked to the stadium.  Was actually nice doing this as it was a good warm up.

The amount of people blew me away.  You see my previous too events probably had 1000 people at best, so with this being possibly 7000 I was very intrigued to see what will happen.  It was superbly organised, well manned with marshals and people to help you in the right direction etc.  My hat off to the organisers.

After the mandatory loo visit, we made our way to the start line. What an awesome vibe with super friendly people and everyone greeting each other.  I took this snap of the people behind us as we were about 4 row’s from the front of the pack for the 5km.  As you can see, hundreds of people and very overcast.  Being overcast and little cooler was fantastic as it made the run much easier for me.
My goal in this race and races going forward is to improve  on my finishing time, even if it is just by a minute or two.  So I shared this goal with Sheldon, who took it as a personal challenge and we charged ahead.

To my surprise and absolute glee, we finished the race in 42min and some change.  This shaved a whopping SIX MINUTES off the 5km race I did on the 2 Jan.  I was beaming!

With medal in hand, and having met a new a twitter friend (@biggestbossfan) as well as saying howzit to @Bronyw, it was time to head on home.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself and will definitely do this race again next year, the only difference is next year will be the 21km