Finally, after almost nine years in Sydney, I got around to entering the City2Surf last week. The City2Surf is a 14km fun-run, starting in Sydney’s CBD and finishing at Bondi Beach, and is one of the biggest races in the world, with 67,000 particpants last year. Most of my friends have done it, but I was always snowboarding or something at this time of the year, so I never got around to it.

When I went to the site to enter, I discovered, to my dismay, that it was going to be a bit more difficult than I thought. Due to the sheer numbers participating, there are 4 different start groups. The first two, SH1 and SH2, require that you submit a previous time before you can be included, which ruled me out as a first-timer. The problem was that the third group was full, so my only option was to run with the “back-of-the-pack” group.

Now I know I can run 14km, so I’m not doing the race just to finish it, I’d like to post a time, and there’s no way I could do that with 40,000 people already on the road in front of me. Luckily I discovered that I could submit some previous race results and the organisers might permit me to start in one of the SH groups, even though I haven’t done a City2Surf before. SH1 is for those with a previous time of under 75mins for the 14km, so, since I can comfortably run 51mins for 10km, I figured I’d aim high and apply for that group. As a backup, I also asked that the organisers consider me for SH2 (<100mins) if they felt I wasn’t up to scratch for SH1, but that turned out not to be necessary as they let me in to SH1!

So, next Sunday morning, look out for me lining up with the Kenyans! I’ll be the pasty white bloke giving away 25kgs ;-)