Monday 17 February 2014

I Just Ran, I Ran All Night And Day

From my journal the day after the race:

I did the half marathon!

It may have been a bumpy road getting there but in the end it was pretty amazing.

I wasn't too thrilled to find out on Thursday that there was no kit pickup on Sunday. So I would have to drive to Exhibition Place on Saturday to pick it up. Not a good start. All kinds of small things seemed against me from then on.

We took a last minute dinner invite on Saturday; I figured I would still be safe to get my pre-race pasta dinner, what restaurant doesn't have pasta of some kind? Johnny Eh's apparently. So I tried to pick healthy with carbs, a portobello sandwich. And then they were out of those, so I ended up with a grilled chicken sandwich. Not bad but my groove was just thrown off.

I didn't get a great nights sleep and we had to be up at 5. It was pouring rain and when we got to Toronto, we were backed up for ages just trying to get off the Gardiner. I was worrying that as early as we were, we would have a tough time finding parking. Luckily we took the first one we found on Adelaide, despite the long walk to the starting line (a nice warm-up before, a painful endless journey after). But all worked out, I got my bathroom breaks in and found the corrals no problem. And magically it stopped raining just as the race started.

I surprisingly wasn't really nervous at any point, other than worrying that we wouldn't find parking in time. I was actually expecting a bigger crowd but maybe it was just spread out enough to seem manageable. At 8:51 a.m, I crossed the starting line.

Of course I started off with some technical difficulties, my headphones were wrapped around my bib and some random media player was playing a song definitely not from my running playlist. But it was easily sorted out. Then, 5 minutes in, I land in a pothole full of water.

Luckily enough, all was good for the first 10 km. The first 5 were actually quite simple, and getting to 10 wasn't so bad. I was still with many people until about km 7, but then most of them seemed to disappear. Up to km 10 I was running 10 minutes, walking 2. Once I got past 10 though, I was just dying for the gel station at km 13; I desperately needed a kick of carbs and energy.

I was at that point walking every other 10 minute interval, just desperate to get to that water station. I was feeling fairly weak. But of course I passed a water station at km 13 with very few volunteers and only water; hydration wasn't my problem, energy was! So I figured maybe the gels were further ahead (despite all the gel litter on the ground that suggested otherwise). Once I hit km 14, I accepted the fact that they had run out of gels and I wasn't getting one.

I texted Nick; I was getting dizzy. Being as awesome as he is, he raced to meet me around km 18 with Gatorade and a power bar. (My hero). When I had hit the 5 km mark, I was doing 9 min/km, but by the time I saw Nick, my lead was dwindling. It would be a fight to finish at my goal of 3:30. But the energy shot saved me.

Around km 17 I started running every 3rd song, and after I saw Nick, every other song. (My luck of course, Sandstorm I had to run to). And naturally I was just finishing a run song when the crowd and the "500 m left" sign appeared. There was no way I could walk any part of the rest.

That last stretch was completely surreal. The sun was trying to peek through behind me, full marathoners were also coming in, the crowd was loud, we were running directly up towards this crazy majestic building, and it was just so unbelievable that I did it. It didn't feel like 3.5 hours, but I in fact squeaked in 1 min 45 secs under my goal time. Since I knew I was cutting it close, I was giving it all I had in that last km. I wasn't sure whether walking would get me there faster at that point (probably) but I wanted to finish strong and that meant running, no matter how slow.


It was amazing. Whether I ran all of it or not, I completed a half marathon. And that's pretty awesome. It was pretty cool to be running down the middle of Bay St, or Lakeshore. The course was really great actually, despite plenty of long straight stretches. I can't believe I went from barely being able to run 500 m to finishing a half marathon. I actually feel proud of myself for accomplishing this, no matter how my training went.


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