Paul Daniel's Views On The World, For What They're Worth

In my Red Cross volunteering capacity, I recently looked after the radio communications and other agency liaison activities for the Herald Sun Run For The Kids. This is a fun run (gotta love that name – don’t sound like fun to me) where, in the longer form, participants run from the Domain in Melbourne, half way to Footscray and back again. It’s 14.1 kilometres in total and includes two quite significant climbs.

There’s something I don’t understand. Why would people whose daily exercise probably extends to walking to the fridge to get another beer, suddenly think they are going to be able to successfully run 14 kilometres?

Our first aiders were flat stick all morning, and Ambulance Victoria had six transports to hospital, not to mention all the assessments their bicycle team had to do. All the transports were related to people collapsing, not the trauma (e.g. falls, car v runner) we’ve seen in previous events.

For goodness sake people, with a bunch of fun runs (there’s that tautology again) coming up, think seriously about whether you have the capacity to complete the event successfully and not end up in hospital. Or a cemetery.