Task 2 Julian Michelsen

The City to Surf

I was in my mum's car, driving to Centennial Park. Every Sunday my mum and I would go to Centennial Park to run. At the park we would usually do either intervals, or run around the park once, (5 km). On the way to the park my mum was going on about how she had to train for the City to Surf, a 14 km race that went on every year. After I'd heard that, I asked a question to my mum, "do you think I could participate in it?" I asked. And my mum must reply was. "If you train hard enough and if you want to, then yeah I guess so." I was bursting with joy, THE CITY  TO  SURF!!!, I had been wanting to do it from when I could watch it on TV.  And then the training began. I trained much harder from then on, trying my best at everything. I often trained with my friend Tiryon who was also doing the race. The city to Surf is the biggest race in the world with over 80,000 people competing. The race altogether is 14 km and the record time for running it is 40.03 min.

It was the week before 14th August, the day of the race. In those few days I practically ate just pasta, pasta and more pasta. My mum said that it would give me energy for the day of the race.

Finally the day of the race came, I was so excited (and energetic from the pasta ) that I could barely contain it. We met at Tiryon's house and put on some warm clothes that we could take off and throw away just before the race started. We drove there in Tiryon's car. When we got there I could not believe my eyes, there were so many people! All of them wearing disposable clothes. Just before nine o'clock everyone was taking the disposable clothes off into their running clothes. My mum had already started running because she was in a different division than Tiryon and I. And then it was our turn, we started jogging at a generous pace. I thought some parts of the race were difficult because they were hilly, actually, practically the whole race had hills and slopes. We were just about to cross the end of the race when Tiryon's mum said that we should give one last push into it, and we did. We ran with newfound strength through the gates. After the race was over we both got our medals and sat on the beach to eat some chips. I found out that my time was one hour and 45 min and 30 seconds. I got a picture of me running.

 I thought it was a very exciting event and a day not to be forgotten. The next day both my legs were very tired and that day I did practically nothing sports wise. I did not think I will forget it in my life, because it was such a great experience.

By Julian Michelsen