connect.garmin.com/playe
r/4209435
Started at 7:30 am on the first leg - 10 km by myself. There's a lift bridge along the route that is very busy this time of year. You don't want to get caught when there's a boat coming through because it takes about 10 minutes to lift and lower back into place. As I was coming up to the bridge, it was just lowering the last few inches into place. Heading back to the car, I was feeling pretty good when another runner stopped me - the back of my skirt was tucked up into my fuel belt!
Head back to my car to meet Beth and have sport beans and water and lose my long sleeve top. It's unseasonably warm today (18 C at 7 am and currently 25 C at 4:45 pm) and it was humid. We start running and I feel the familiar blister tingle in my foot. CRAP. Fortunately we were running in the direction of my house anyways so decided to stop off at home and re-tape my feet. I didn't have my house key (locked in the car), thankfully my hubby was home but he didn't expect doorbell ringers so I rang twice and even bellowed from the driveway towards the bedroom window (in case he was still sleeping) for him to open the damn door!
Our original plan was to continue running east through Burlington (lots of stores/bathrooms) but we decided stopping at red lights and running on the concrete sidewalk was not a lot of fun so we headed back to the beach...but there's another boat crossing the bridge so the course got altered ONCE AGAIN to run on North Shore Blvd., which is a series of rolling hills. There's a park where we stopped to fill our water bottles (once each way) and to wash the stinging sunscreen from my eyes...and finally I could let myself think, "this is the final leg!" By this time I was a bit dizzy and I said out loud what I believe every marathoner and wanna-be marathoner feels during the longest training run, "WHAT have I gotten myself in to?!" We walked up a lot of the hills but my Garmin showed the 34 km split and I said NO MORE WALK BREAKS! and found the gas to run the final kilometer.
Then I dragged my sweaty butt to my usual post-run restaurant for some Vietnamese bun (vermicelli), because I needed food more than a shower at that point, and then home where my legs got a wonderful shot of cold water in the shower.
All things considered, my feet are not that bad, one small new blister on my arch, and one on my 2nd smallest toe. I'm going to experiment with new socks.
Obviously, I had a nap when I came home, or else I would not have been able to write this!
Oh Mme. Fingersandtoes will hate me for posting this pic where she has bad hair.
Stepped out the door at 8:25 and it was pouring rain. During the drive, DH was saying stuff like, "ugggh, I hate to walk in the rain." (yeah and I have to run 30 km in it!) The place where I had planned to park was impossible to get to with the road closures and time was running tight so DH had to drop me off while he found parking and didn't manage to see me off at the starting line.
Despite having gone to the bathroom 4 times between finishing my coffee and the start, I spent the first 10k thinking about peeing. I CANNOT deal with wasting 3-5 minutes of precious time waiting in line for the porta-potty! So I found a big tree, my running partner shielded me from the crowd and we were on our way again in under a minute. LESSON LEARNED: wear running skirt at the marathon and make like Paula Radcliffe! Much easier bathroom access!
Kilometres 10-20 saw the rain let up. Main thing was keeping the pace SLOW. We'd find ourselves running 6:10/km and faster when our target pace was 6:30. Wind started to really pick up.
The final third. Full of rolling hills, culminating in a 450 metre STEEP hill. I am strong on hills so my running partner was a bit behind me at this point. My goal was to maintain at least a 7:00/km pace on this stretch. As I hit the incline, I yell, "it's the moment of truth, let's go people!" and she yells, "GO PATTY!" from behind me.
After The Hill, there's 4 kms (downhill) to the finish. Pass the cemetery and the Grim Reaper, who's actually smiling. At this point my legs are completely numb and moving on auto pilot but I will NOT let myself stop for a walk break with so little left to go in the race. I just missed my Reach goal of 3:15 with an official chip time of 3:16:20 and under due to my unexpected pit stop, but I am very happy with my performance.
Here's me crossing the finish line. I love that look. I love the feeling of accomplishment.
www.flickr.com/photos/zo
rbs/3395462711/in/set-7215
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Official chip time: 2:05:29.
Start time was 10am, so I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to prepare. Temp was -7 C with a windchill of -14 and sunny. Normally in this kind of weather I'd wear wind pants over tights, but I would never do that in a race.
My running partner and I ran most of the race together, we both had the same goal, sub-2:10. Pretty much even splits throughout.
I revamped my music playlist for this race. No 'angry' negative songs, not too many slow songs. Every song was carefully chosen for motivational lyrics and I was determined not to let my mind wander halfway through as I have always done in past races.
I really focused on the song lyrics and mouthed the words...except for 3 seconds when I sang along, "I'M ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL!" heheh
What really worked was being familiar with the course - I could gage in my mind exactly how much farther to go (the Garmin helped as well), and I knew the course was flat as a board. When I passed 20K at just under 2 hours, I knew I had a PR in the books but decided to really turn on the afterburners for the end. It's really sad to see people who appear uninjured walking to the finish!
And I even surpassed my super-secret goal: to beat my running partner in a race!
If you want to relive my race in super fast Garmin time, here's the link:
connect.garmin.com/activ
ity/2309583
Forgive me if I ramble incoherently, but I wanted to get these thoughts down before the feeling of the moment leaves me...
Race start time was 7:30, got up at my usual time, 4:15 with 3 rounds of snooze. The morning started off badly, my mom came by when I was snoozing and said, "GET UP!" If you follow my posts on the boards, you'll know that I get up at 4:15 5 days a week and have been doing it for 2 years and haven't ever failed to make it out of bed, so it was totally unnecessary and annoying that mom was kicking me out of bed. Basically was trying to duplicate my normal morning routine, except that we were sleeping at my parent's condo because of the closer proximity to the race start.
Did not do a warm up at all. I was just getting into the corral when the gun sounded. My running partner took off on her own after about 1K. I expected to run most of the race by myself but that happened earlier than I expected.
I did the first 10K split in 1:10:54, a ridiculously slow pace for me.
note to ZIRCADIA - the Creed songs on my playlist, although with inspiring lyrics, were all slow and contributed to the slow 10K!
At ~12K, the turning point (it was an out and back course), something really amazing and unexpected happened. My SIL had a sign with my name on it! She also had a sign for my other SIL. It really, really perked me up when I was flagging. Soon after, one of my big 'power songs' came on and it picked me up even more.
I meant to run with the 2:15 pace bunny and finally caught up with the group around 15K. I decided to keep her in sight for the rest of the race. Sometimes I was a few metres ahead, sometimes behind.
I crossed the finish line in 2:12:55.4, and there was a long walk through to get to the chip return/water station. We Are The Champions was playing and I had a little cry.
Unfortunately my mp3 player got jostled off me in the post-race somewhere.
I got a huge blister. A year of running, 2 20K training runs, not so much as a tiny chafe but come race day ..ow!
Russell Watson - Faith of the Heart (the song that always gets me through the tough races)
It's been a long road
Getting from there to here
It's been a long time
But my time is finally near
And I can feel the change in the wind right now
Nothing's in my way
And they're not gonna hold me down no more
No they're not gonna hold me down
'Cause I've got faith of the heart
I'm going where my heart will take me
I've got faith to believe
I can do anything
I've got strength of the soul
And no one's gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I've got faith, I’ve got faith, faith of the heart
It's been a long night
Trying to find my way
Been through the darkness
Now I've finally have my day
And I will see my dream come alive at last
I will touch the sky
And they're not gonna hold me down no more
No they're not gonna change my mind
'Cause I've got faith of the heart
I'm going where my heart will take me
I've got faith to believe
I can do anything
I've got strength of the soul
And no one's gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I've got faith, faith of the heart
I've known the wind so cold, and seen the darkest days.
But now the winds I feel, are only winds of change.
I've been through the fire and I've been through the rain.
But I'll be fine.
Cause I've got faith of the heart
I'm going where my heart will take me
I've got faith to believe
I can do anything
I've got strength of the soul
And no one's gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I've got faith
I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart will take me.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's gonna bend or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith, I've got faith, faith of the heart.
It's been a long road.
time: 1:03:21 ugh!
course: 3 giant rolling hills
"Recreational" runners/walkers did an 8.5km route.
It turns out that to bump the distance to an even 10K, all "elite" runners run an extra lap around the mall.
Since this race is a charity fun run, there are no timing chips. I figured you didn't have to do anything special to qualify as an "elite" runner. I was wearing my shirt that says, In my dreams I am a Kenyan and a lady came up and said, with a shirt like yours, you should be with the elite runners. So my shirt kind of came true, just for this race, I got to go in the elite starting corral with only about 20 other people and pretend I was a Kenyan!
So we started first to do the extra mall lap and theoretically all the runners should have been out of the way when the walkers started, but I was juuuuuuuuuust coming up behind them when they started, so I had to get through the slowest walkers..and dogs..and strollers...and children.
I did that starting mall lap WAY too fast, 1.something km in something like 8 minutes and went pretty slow the rest of the way.
But overall, not too bad for a fun run.
This race was definitely easier than I anticipated. I was thinking that there would be brutal downhills where I'd feel out of control (hate that, give me hills any day!) Chip time was 56:17, well ahead of my anticipated time of 1:00+.
Things to note:
- I slept well last night. Usually the night before I am nervous/excited and end up tossing and turning.
- Curse whoever neglected to put a zip tie and safety pins in my race kit.
- After 29 years and 322 days, I used a porta-potty. I was hoping I would remain a porta-potty virgin FOREVER.
- I bumped into the former head trainer from my gym, who I always thought was a elite super fast runner. I checked the stats and I finished a minute ahead of her!
I leave you with a lovely picture of me sprinting across the finish line, courtesy of my dad.
I ran the Bay and Back 5K in 28:44.8 today, completely demolishing my previous PR of 31:08. I think my next goal is to run a similar time and just have it HURT LESS!
The best part was when I muscled up a steep hill in the 2nd half and actually hearing someone say, "wow, look at her go!"
