A REASON TO HEAD WEST THIS MAY

When I made my first visit to Perth in 2011 for football, I didn’t have any idea that the morning of the match was the HBF Run For A Reason event held around the Perth CBD. Not that I woke up early enough to be caught out by the traffic, I actually only realised this the day after the event. Since then I thought it may have been a decent idea to get involved one day, but I didn’t expect this to come to fruition.

That moment will come this May 26, as I’ve decided to take a weekend off football duties on the East Coast to travel across the continent just to take park. Originally the appeal of a challenging 14km run was the lure to bring me across, with the 10km event on the Gold Coast in early May being an ideal training run. However on release of this year’s course and details the distance had been shortened by 2km. There is also a 4km event for those who don’t feel they can make the long distance but I was always going to take the longer journey to get more value for the trip

Am I disappointed? Part of me says yes given the challenge seemed to be diminished a little, but another part of me is glad that the distance has been shortened. After all it now provides a better stepping stone to the 14km City2South event in Brisbane a few weeks later. There may be a few that are confused that I’m treating events like this as training, but the final goal as everyone knows this year is the City2Surf in Sydney in August. And by nominating myself in the B start group (where the finish times are anticipated to be between 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 25 minutes) I feel I’m giving myself scope to get a better finishing time and position rather than by being just another face buried towards the back of a pack.

Fundraising for this event is taking place, and I have decided to raise some funds for the Western Australian branch of the Cancer Council (there’s a branch for every state). There is no set limit or goals to how much I want to actually raise (even though the page has a default value of $500), as every dollar does help and there’s no chance of failing. The page where there are links to donate can be found at http://hbfrunfundraising.com.au/mick_jeffrey

The event is called Run For A Reason, and every entrant is asked for their reason to run. Many are doing it for themselves, others are doing it as a tribute for those who are struggling health wise. Personally, my reason actually has nothing to do with healthy living, but has more to do with the human spirit. My reason is “To bring the spirit of the Flood affected communities in Queensland across to the west.” I’m sure the Sydney and even the Brisbane centric media would have scoffed at this suggestion, but I feel as though something like this is a perfect opportunity to represent Bundaberg (where several people I have known reside) and the remainder of Central Queensland (which are about to reach the peak as I post this).

Training for this event will begin in earnest in March, for I am fearful of over training myself for these runs (Gold Coast and Brisbane included) by starting too early. That’s not to say I’m going to be lazy, there is football training to take part in and running requirements for that to pass. But the run centric training will take precedence in March. Watch this space for some details of my training regime, which again is my own and not a facsimile of an expert.

It costs $42 to enter the 12km run, plus another $6 to get the race package posted by entering before ANZAC Day, and the 4km event will cost $33 (there are discounts if you are a HBF member in WA, who sponsor the event amongst many others in the state). The website for Run For A Reason is http://www.hbfrun.com.au/