The day after Around the Bay

Happy Monday,

It is indeed a happy day as I completed the 30K run Around the Bay in Hamilton yesterday.  This is my first race of the five events I have signed up for this season.  I have decided I'll put a fund raising target beside each race thus starting to put in place the plan to raise my personal goal of $5000 for Gate 3:16 Outreach Center.

Back to the race.  As you know I was up before the robins and headed over to Whitby to meet my fellow racers for 5:30.  After stopping for coffee and food we were on the 401 by 6AM.  As traffic in Toronto is very hard to read we gave ourselves lots of time to arrive for the start.  We ended up being two hours early but the very positive side is we had the best parking in the house.  The van was parked the across street from Copps Coliseum.  We could not get any closer.  It was awesome !!! 

At this point I was still undecided if I was going to start with the walkers or an hour later with the runners.  With the encouragement of Lisa I decided it would be the run.  Off to see the limited display, take care of mother nature, back to the car and we saw our two walkers off. Then it was time to get ourselves ready for the start line.  And we are off....

Lisa and I ran together until around 22K mark.  I was actually running not plodding along.  It felt good except the blisters but if it isn't going to kill you suck it up.  I was starting to fade around the 22K mark not so much the legs/calves/ankles but was feeling woozy.  Somewhere around this point I started to walk and run - more walk then run. I'm naturally a fast walker so this helped.  This last 8K I counted down the miles but eventually after the HUGE hill I came up to the bridge and could see the coliseum.  At that point I knew I would make it.  I entered the finalist race shute and came over the line with a chip time of 3 hours and 45 minutes and a smile. The training was tough but it is worth it when you have made your goal.


Today I feel fantastic. The normal quad stiffness but no pain in the ankle, lower leg or calves.  Lessons learned:

• get a Garmin so I can monitor my pace and run at the same pace or more I ran with Lisa (its doable and I'm not plodding and I'm positive this is one reason I'm feeling good. 
• although the aid stations were billed as being 5K apart don't trust they are 5K apart.  Take a little bottle of water with you. 
• nutrition - the salts pills work to keep the cramping down but take more to keep the electrolytes in place, figure out what might of caused the wooziness and fix it before next race day
  

Overall I am very pleased with my time.  Based upon my longest training distance being only 26K and the constant nagging problems I thought I was hoping for 4 hours so doing it in less is very good.


Thanks to Lisa, Susan, Elaine and John for a day to remember.  This must do race was made even more special by having a great group of people and athletes to participate with.  When we made it home to Whitby that hot tub was awesome.


I'll say goodbye with a picture of the medal.