Wow, as part of my Grand Canyon training and road back to general running fitness, I’ve just completed my first half marathon in what has been a long time.

The last official event I did that was a half marathon or longer distance was actually the Rotorua Marathon in New Zealand, about four and a half years ago in 2006. Looking at this actually stunned me an reminded me I should actually enter in more events!

It took me 3:41:55 to complete and I was pretty happy with that time as both my knees crapped themselves at the 31km mark and I had to walk (read: hobble) the last 11km to the finish.

This week, I drove my lovely wife out to Papakura, (about 26km from our house) for a baby shower and started running back.. I was planning about a 1 hour/12km run and she was to pick me up somewhere on the way though..

..Unfortunately the car was hemmed in by party-goers and to make matters worse, the road I was running down diverts cars in a not-so-obvious way onto another road as it goes though Otahuhu…

Given my longest previous run of about 16km, and the fact it was bucketing down with rain, I was very happy to be rescued just after the 21km mark, not far from my house..

I am calling this the unofficial Papakura-Half-Marathon, and you can see the course map here.