Who are these people?

Very much against the grain, I decided to go to bed early on Saturday night - missing out on what could have been a good party...

I got up early on Sunday morning with the keen intention of photographing a local event. Living right in the heart of the city, I knew that between 10 & 11am, there were going to be 9,000 people running past my apartment.

It was the annual 10km run - an event I know only too well!

A couple of years ago I ran it 2 days after shifting house - that is after shifting into a new apartment that was up 3 sets of fairly steep stairs (like Dutch steps - if you've ever been to the Netherlands). Anyway, 3 friends were supposed to give me a hand and none of them showed up *grumble* (of course, they all had good excuses)! On the day my Quads were already absolutely fried and it was a horror run.


Last year I did it again and this time there was a mini-heatwave (20 degrees is a mini-heatwave in this part of ol' blighty). Hence, the ol' spleen took another good hammering.

This year I decided 'bugger it' and vigourously fended off all suggestions about doing it with a firm and unrelenting "NO, I'm not doing it this year!"

But, I did decide to photograph the event and as you can tell by the pictures, the weather was atrocious. Really, really, really bad (especially for photography)! I'm starting to think that 10km races & I don't mix.

Nonetheless, I got some interesting pictures (these aren't them). Actually, it was quite hard to get any pictures of the 'elite atheletes'. Between the bad conditions, using a zoom lens and the fact that they were going downhill - bloody quickly, it was hard to get anything of them at all.

As an aside - the eventual winner of the womens race, won the 2005 New York Marathon. Touche!