Happy Hour

I went for my first Nike "Happy Hour" Training Run today. The short run was led by Cheng Chih-chien (鄭子健), the first Taiwanese male finisher of the full marathon in the ING Taipei International Marathon in 2006. Cheng had completed it in 2 hours 25 minutes and 25 seconds. (!) Our training run began outside the Nike shop at Songshou Road (松壽路), near Taipei 101. Intially, the run was rather slow and congested because a large number of runners had signed up for it, but after a few traffic lights to "filter" the runners by their speed, I found myself settling into a manageable but nevertheless "breath-taking" pace. The brochure said that we would be running 6 km, but I reckoned we did a lot less, maybe 3 km, because I completed the circuit in 18 min 40 seconds, inclusive of a few traffic stops. The run was SO not 6 km. :P But never mind. It felt good to run again.

After the post-race cool down, there was a free flow of bananas, tortilla chips, mineral water and tea, which was nice. I went into the Nike shop later on and bought myself a really cool athletic windbreaker. It's pricy, but it looks great. I'm treating it as a Christmas gift for myself :D