Race Report: Ottawa Race Weekend

Joy here...Ottawa is abuzz with activity this weekend for Race Weekend. The entire city comes alive as elite runners and regular folks lace up their shoes and head out to run in the streets of the city, and the rest of us line the streets to cheer them on.

Heading to the start line...

Usually we're in Malaysia at this time of the year, so it's pretty rare to be able to participate in the festivities, much less run in the races ourselves.

But this year I signed up for the 5km race. I'm probably as unprepared for a race as I've ever been.

"If you're consistent with your training," my coach said, "then you can aim for under 25 minutes."

Of course, I wasn't consistent with my training. As my last post makes clear, I'm not in good shape, and I'm not ready to do a running race.  But, well, race day appeared, and I had signed up to run, so, well, um, I showed up to the start line as planned.

With no other plan except a half-baked plan to aim for under 25 minutes, I headed to the start line after warming up.  There was a chill in the air, but the sweat of the bodies crammed up at the start line kept me warm (and assaulted my olfactory senses with the BO of thousands of bodies). The air horn went off, and we all started running.

Under 25 minutes, under 25 minutes,
under 25 minutes...

I knew full well that I had to keep consistent. While I may not pay attention to my coach and be consistent with my training, I have let him drill it into my head that I have to start slower than I finish, and keep my ego in check for the first half of any workout I do.  So while all the keeners at the start of the race were off like foxes fearing the braying of the hounds, I had to keep myself conservative.  I let them all pass me and tried not to take it personally.  I looked to my Garmin, but with thousands of runners all running around, with their own Garmins and devices pinging back and forth to satellites overhead, my pace wasn't showing up consistently.  One second it would say I was running 4:28min/km, then I'd look down and it would say 5:08min/km, and then 4:12min/km, and then 6:28min/km. Every 200m or so I would get a ping from my Garmin saying that each 200m was taking me around 1minute.  If that was correct, then I was on pace.  So I kind of used that as a vague gauge and just tried to run based on how things felt, but running on "feel" has never been my strong suit.

This would be my test.

I ran, sure I was slow. I ran, being passed by kids and their parents. I ran, just trying to be consistent.

I turned a corner past the halfway mark and ran past The Man and some of our friends cheering, and then I saw another friend from the running group and waved in her face (she later told me: "you looked awesome!").  And then, before I knew it, I was at the 4km mark, and just started running faster.  I started forcing my breathing to be faster and I started counting in my head...1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...And then I saw the clock overhead at the finish line, and as my eyes began to focus, I saw 24:38...I was under 25 minutes, but I still had meters to run.

So I sped up, willing those damn legs to move faster, finishing the final 200m at a 4:26min/km pace and in 53 seconds (rather than the 5min/km and 1 minute per 200m I had averaged throughout the rest of the run).

My Garmin pinged that I had finished my 5kms, ringing the tone of completion, and I looked down to see beautiful digits:  24:52.  But then as I passed under the finishing banner I could tell that the clock ticked over the 25 minute mark.

Post-race bananas...doesn't get any better than this!

I finished and waited up for my friend's daughter (also a friend) to finish her 5km race so that we could get our post-race bananas and walk back together and meet up with her parents and The Man.

And after we high-fived and enjoyed the post-race buzz, I looked up my results and realized that even being out of shape and inconsistent with my training, I still finished in 22nd place for my age/gender (top 3%) and to 10% of the overall 5km racers.

More important than all that data, I was absolutely dead on with my pace throughout the race, and I finished faster than I started.  So all my work on this over the past year is starting to pay off, and that, well, that's motivating (which is something that I've struggled with).

Maybe it's time for me to sign up for another half marathon...

Over and out,
Joy

Run Stats:
According to my Garmin:  Ran for 5kms in 24:52 for an avg pace of 4:58min/km.
According to Sportstats Official Timing:  Ran for 5kms in 25:05 for an avg pace of 5:00min/km.