I suck at writing race reports - 115th Around the Bay Road Race

 

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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I reached all my goals!

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