Running the City2Surf is a bit like hitting your head against a wall… it is great when it is over!
After you have run the City2Surf, you will feel tired, relieved and hopefully satisfied with yourself. For days after you have finished, friends and colleagues are likely to ask you how you went, and if they have never done it themselves, they’ll usually ask; ‘What place did you come?’
This can be a conversation killer because not only don’t you know what place you came, but also most City2Surf participants don’t care. It is not about the place you come, it is about your own time and how you performed against yourself and the clock.
A lot of people have a goal they want to get under. When I was a teenager and in my twenties, my goal, like many, was to be under 60 minutes.
My first City to Surf certificate… 90.07 for the 9.4 miles
When I did my very first City2Surf in 1971, my goal was to get under 100 minutes because if you didn’t, you were disqualified and didn’t get a time or a place to tell your friends about.
My time for the 9.4 miles (15.12km) was 90.07 and I remember feeling happy because I had just scraped it in. It was only recently that I found my old certificate with the time on it, because all these years I had thought I did something like 97 minutes and I also didn’t remember that the run used to be over 15km before they moved the start.
When I found this old certificate, it put a whole different spin on my City2Surf mindset. I just did a quick calculation and a time of 90 min in the first event is equivalent to around 83min at today’s shorter distance. So, anytime I do slower than 83minutes, I’m running slower than I did as a 10 year old!
Like to do it too?
If you want to run the City2Surf for the first time, you can follow my training plan Lifting Your Game for joggers or A New Beginning, the training plan for walkers.
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Update April 2013
My City2Surf Training Program is now an eBook
‘How to Break Your Fitness Slump and Comfortably Finish a Fun Run’
My full City2Surf training program is now available as an eBook from all leading online bookstores and contains a link to download the training schedule as an iCal file, so you can import it into your calendar.
Also, feel free to join my free Facebook training group the City2Surf 100 day Challenge.