Back at it

Sunday, I ran my first race post-NYC — A 21.1km “fun run” that had me gasping for breath when I hurled myself across what I thought was the finish line, but turned out to be a festive yellow arch placed about 100 metres from it.

Minus that somewhat embarrassing mishap, I had a great time at Burlington Ontario’s Chilli Half Marathon.   The sold-out event is an annual staple in my run group’s training plan and Stevil had us all run it according to one of these workouts:

— Break the race into thirds – run the first slowly, the second moderately, the third fast.
— Run your goal-marathon race pace
— Go balls to the walls and see how far you can make it before you crash.

As you may recall I am officially taking this season off from goals, so I decided to do a modified version of #2. I set out to run the race at  a 5:30min/km pace (my NYC goal-pace), not including water stops, which would bring me in somewhere just below the two-hour mark.

Highlights?  I got to see Canadian Running’s inaugural editor, Michal Kapral in action. (Watch it here) Otherwise known as “The Joggler”  he ran a 1:24:32 wearing a head-cam, juggling three balls and looking so relaxed I slapped him just to make sure he was awake.

I also had a five-foot-tall, 110lbs, 60-something year old man behind/beside/just in front of me for the entire race. Every time, and I mean every single time, we passed a person on the side of the road he yelled at them — “give it up”, “let’s hear some noise”, “Can I have a bite of that?” Yes,  I had my own personal cheerleader for the entire race — awesome.

Most memorable? At around the 18km mark when my legs were burning and my mental countdown “just 16.5 more minutes, hang on, come on Becky, hang on”  had officially begun, I felt  a slap on my bum. I turned to see my smiling NYC marathon roommate – a woman who has the inexplicable talent of starting any race running at least a minute slower per kilometre than me and finishing much much faster.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: “I’ve been waiting for you to pass me.”
Her: “I’m not passing you.”
Me: “Please pass me.”
Her: “No.”
Me: “Please? Please?”
Her: “No.”

And so we “raced” the last 3km. She won — had it not been for that god damn yellow arch I might have had a chance.

I finished the race in 1:55:36. Slower than I ran it last year and slower than I ran the Oakville half in September after having run 10km first. But it was fun and I was happy to be back at it.  And for me, that’s what matters.

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