I took part in the Oasis Zoo Run’s 5K Walk this year and it took place on September 20 within the Toronto Zoo!
And yes, that meant that Chris and I did the Walk through the Zoo! How awesome is that?!
We got there pretty early at around 8:50am to pick up our race package and get to the starting point, which actually went over pretty smoothly. There weren’t any major hold ups and the directions were fairly clear although everything seemed to have been delayed by about 15 minutes from the 10K race starting later than anticipated.
Watching the 10K runners pass by in the morning.
The last time I went to the Toronto Zoo was during a field trip for an Ecology course in university, and we were mostly focused on getting enough data for an assignment for me to remember much. Also, the Zoo was under some renovation in some areas during that time and I hadn’t been back since!
The planned route was carefully laid out and barricaded from public visitors so the participants would be able to go through the course with minimal disturbances.
We all started in corrals separated by colours. When I signed up with Chris, I wasn’t sure how long I would take so I put in the maximum amount of time at 1h30m and got placed in the Purple Corral with Chris. We were in the last group to start!
I used these shoes for the run – New Balance Minimus WT1010v2. Love them!
Well… The last group in the 5K section, at least. The run also has a separate run for kids called the Cub Run, which started right after ours and had a much shorter distance for the kiddies to go.
Although, I was extremely impressed that there were a lot of young kids doing the 5K with their parents and I even saw a few who did the 10K run when they passed us on the routes!
For some reason, I expected the route to be a bit more… flat. It turned out to have a bunch hills, including one that felt like it had a 30 degree incline that we had to go up and down on the 3rd kilometer!
Courtesy of Canada Running Series
Chris and I walked the whole course together and I finished it in 49:34.4! Considering that we only jogged the first maybe 100m to get a good spot on the track, that’s a pretty good walking speed of 6km/h.
That’s faster than the Gardiner Expressway during rush hour! (Ba-dum-tsh)
After the run and some lunch, we went exploring the zoo and visited the giant pandas, polar bears, and the wolves before absolutely calling it a day.
Even though we didn’t do any actual running, finishing a 5K event has really inspired me to at least try to increase my fitness endurance over the next year so I can actually run for the majority of the route!
Right now, I’m not sure what sort of fitness plan I’ll try to follow, but it’s definitely something I’ll be looking into this season.
How do you train for marathons? Have you ever tried? I’d love to hear about your experiences!
xoxo,
B.elle
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