Manawatu Gorge Track

What a way to celebrate birthdays!  My running buddy Kate celebrated her birthday earlier in February and I celebrated mine just last week so over the weekend we headed out to celebrate.  And how exactly did we do this?  By running the Manawatu Gorge Track.  I remember from walking the Loop last year that there are a lot of steps at the beginning but I don't think I was fully aware of just how much uphill there is for the first 3km!  I struggled.  Walking up the hills felt like the best thing to do to conserve some energy and I really think this did play off with being able to 'fly' through some of the other parts later in the run.  Now while time isn't really an issue we had kind of set ourselves a mini goal of completing it in 1.5hours.  We did it!  Here's just some of the fun we had on Saturday:

I really think this does show just how much fun we had.  I will never say it wasn't hard.  I also won't say that at times I didn't wish I could just give up and be at the end without having to run it at all.  I won't say it wasn't one of the hardest 10km I have done before.  But I will say, I am proud I did it and yes I will go back and do it again.  And just so you can see what I mean about the hills etc and why I walked some, here is the graph showing the elevation of the run:

Till next time :)