My least boring 10km treadmill run ever

Gold’s Gym had its 3rd Gold’s Olympics last Saturday. There are five teams, comprised of members and trainers, who compete in this event that features five elements – running, relay, bench press, boxing, and group exercise.

One of the trainers, James, was forming a team with the help of my trainer, Marlon. Thursday night last week, I got a call from James asking me if I wanted to run the 10km for their team. The run would be on a treadmill – the guy would run 10km and the girl would run 5km on an adjacent treadmill as soon as the guy finished. I told James that (1) I hadn’t run for two months, and (2) I don't run anywhere nearly fast as a lot of other serious long distance runners. I guess he was out of options (I later found out that his original 10km runner was unavailable at the last minute) so I was the guy. I figured I needed the exercise and it was an interesting thing to be a part of, and it was early on Saturday morning so I wasn’t going to lose my entire day. So I agreed to join.

I ended up finishing last out of five runners (as I expected) but I was quite pleased that I finished in under 55 minutes. Considering I haven’t run, exercised, or played any sport in the last 1 ½ months or so, that, for me, was quite an achievement. Also, I was only about 6 minutes behind the 2nd placer, 4 minutes off the pace of the 3rd placer and 2 minutes behind the 4th placer (I was worried my opponents were all track athletes who would be clocking less than 45 minutes and that I would finish in more than an hour which would have been embarrassing). With everyone watching and giving the runners encouragement, that 10km treadmill run didn’t feel boring at all (and it felt like it was less than 54 minutes too).

The cool thing though was that my partner, Jona (not sure if I spelled her name right) absolutely smashed the competition in the 5km. Her time added to mine put out team in 3rd place overall. In fact, she was so fast that if she pushed herself, she could’ve pulled us up to 2nd, but James told her not to overwork herself since she would be doing 100 abdominals in the relay as well.

At the end of the day, our team ended up 3rd overall, losing to the Black team and the Green team (both of which I think featured a truckload of trainers, we had about 3 or 4 only). It was so much fun that I am actually hoping that I get to join again next year despite my last place showing. Maybe if I train continually for the next year, I can shave off enough minutes off of my 10km time, allowing me to get a callback (hehe I wish!)