Round the Bays 2008
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I went along to Round the Bays today. 
Round the Bays has been an annual event in Auckland since 1972, when the Auckland Joggers Club initiated it. The first run attracted 1200 participants and has now grown to be one of the world’s largest fun-runs with an estimated 70,000 participants.
The run is 8.4km long over a flat course that follows the contours of Auckland’s harbour.
The course is really beautiful, and winds along the coast. 
I walked this with my lovely wife. My original plan was to take the little monster my lovely daughter along and carry her in my baby backpack. But fortunately my wife’s cousin volunteered to babysit and all of a sudden that seemed like a much better idea.
We got dropped off near the start line about half an hour before the start. Unfortunately the marshals were on to sneaky buggers like us and we got sent to the back of the pack which was about 1km away.
Once we got going we started to meet up with people we knew and a group of us walked along for about 4 km. It was really nice as there was thousands and thousands of people walking and jogging. I never saw the serious runners as they were too far ahead of us.
About 4km into the race my wife really needed a pitstop and so joined the queue outside the bathrooms at Okahu Bay. Forty five minutes later she rejoined me. That is not a typo! It really took over 45 minutes for the ladies queue! While she was queuing the police and marshals had passed us closing the course so I thought we were going to come in dead last! I had sent all our friends on after waiting about ten minutes as I had figured that she wouldn’t be too long and we could catch up. Once she came out we decided that it would be good to try and catch up so we alternated bursts of running with some extremely fast walking and we caught up with them about 750 metres before the end. We did not finish last at all as we managed to pass a lot of people (with baby strollers and what not). In the end we took 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete the course and considering the long pit stop involved we were ok with that.
It was a really great day. The atmosphere was brilliant and it was a lot of fun. It’s the first time I’ve taken part in an event like this and I’d definitely like to do it again.
I enjoyed it too! Though I don’t have any photos of myself. >_< I did it in 1 hour 25min, including a stop of 15min where I waited for Worker Jay to catch up because I was getting a bit lonely (we didn’t start together - she was doing it through her brother’s work and I was doing it through Les Mills)
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It’s definitely a worthy event. No shortage of sights to see.
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I noticed you noticing! And you a married man.
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I wouldn’t be able to wait 45 minutes for a loo! That’s just wrong!
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45 minutes to go to the loo? That’s nuts!
Looks like a fun walk though!
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[...] « Round the Bays 2008 [...]
Heh…my wife thought it was wrong too! Came out breathing fire and spitting tacks.
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We’ve also passed quite a few who were queuing for the bathroom earlier
hanlie: Trust me. It was WRONG!!! It was like, only about 15 mins to get up to the stairs, shouldn’t be too long to wait. What? More people outside the door, fine… Got to the door? WHAT? 30 more people inside? *cry* But I’ve waited this long, might as well wait till the end… If I had known it would have taken that long, I would have just pushed on!
But at least I could walk a lot faster than this other very fit person
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70,000 people? How does that convert to US Dollars, I mean people? Or from kg to lbs? That’s insane.
Sounds like fun, though.
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Yo dude!
damn a 45 min pitstop you could have finished the race and then sally could have gone to the toilet
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