Imperial students and staff took part in the first One Big Thing 5km sporting challenge in Hyde Park on Friday 17 May.

Imperial College London was one of the 10 universities in the country to be selected to take part in the first One Big Thing event - an initiative created by the ukactive to encourage students to get involved in sport and promote long term physical activity participation.  Each University was asked to create a mass participation event to target ukactive’s aims.

Our main event was a ‘5K anyway’ challenge in Hyde Park, 92 participants turned up at the Old Football Pitches at 17.00 to take part in the challenge.  This event was running in line with ‘Stress Less’, Imperial College Union’s exam stress relief programme and it was a great way to get the students out of the Library and take part in Sport in the fresh air to have a break from the stresses on the end of year exams.

We had a complete mixture of students, staff and Sports Clubs turned up for the One Big Thing challenge. Some took it as a serious race and keen to get a good time; and others just wanted to make the most of the nice weather out in the park and challenge themselves to something new, many of which had put in maximum effort of running in fancy dresses. 

After an intense warm up by Gio form the Active Lifestyles Team the race got underway.  The members of the Cross Country and Triathlon Club took an early lead and Jean Claude Besse and Hugh MacKenzie were clearly ahead of the field at 4.5km and the final 50m came down to an exciting sprint finish, with Jean Claude just taking the win on the line with an impressive time of 16.47.  For the female competitors the fastest times came from Rozelle Kave (21.49) and Pauline Scheelbeck (22.53).  It was a fantastic afternoon with all participants completing the race in under 40 minutes in good spirits and keen for another 5K challenge next year.  The prize for Best Team Spirit went to the Judo Club who not only had many members taking part in the event, ran the course in their Judo Gi’s and even completed Judo throws over the line. 

You can still donate to ‘Right To Play’, the main sponsors for One Big Thing, so if you didn’t get a chance before Friday you can still contribute. http://www.justgiving.com/OneBigThing

Click here to view results

More photos are available on the Sport Imperial Facebook page