Finally, reporting the half-marathon

I ran the much anticipated half-marathon on May 10th. Sorry I didn't report on it sooner, but I think I needed some perspective first. It didn't go too bad. I had some fun with some great friends and about 80% of the run was enjoyable.


However...


I didn't do as good as I had hoped.



The weather totally wasn't on my side. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.



I got up at 6 am and ate my good, healthy breakfast. I snuck out of the house while Bill and the kids were sleeping. Great thing to do on Mother's day. He he. I met up with Amer, Karen, and Sandy at Officer's Square. We had a great warm-up. At 8 am, off we went. We ran two laps around Queen Street/Ste Anne's Point drive. That was the first 5 km. Karen and Sandy shot ahead. Amer and I were keeping a pretty good pace so we stuck together.




Then we crossed over to the green, ran across the train bridge, and then out the Marysville trail. At the 7 km mark, I hit a teeny tiny wall. The problem was that I was running with Amer, and his pace is faster than mine...so I started way too fast. When I told him I needed to pace myself, he said nonsense...you'll push through it. So for 2 km, I tried to keep up with a 26-year-old man/boy, and it wasn't helping. I told him to go ahead. At first he didn't want to leave, because he is a gentleman and didn't want to leave me behind. That is very considerate, but his fast pace was hurting my lungs. So at the 9 km mark, I ordered him to go and so he went. So then I had a really enjoyable run from the 9 km mark to the 18 km mark. It was sublime. I found a great pace bunny. A man about my age or older who passed me, and then I'd pass him, and so on....we chuckled about it.



At the18 km mark, all hell broke loose. See, it had been drizzing for most of the run. I love drizzle. Keeps the temperature down. You don't get hot and sweaty. Love it. At 18 km, it started to pour buckets and buckets of rain. Sometimes, it rained sideways. I never stopped, I slugged through the rain soaked completely to the core. The train bridge was the worst. It was like running through a very thick (.5 km) wall of rain. It was even hard to see. I never wanted to quit. I was too close to the finish for that. But I knew I was going to suffer for it.



When I rounded the bend, Sage and Corena were waiting at the finish line. Bill and Jackson had to leave because of the rain. Amer was waiting for me with just 200 yards left to go. He yelled at me to sprint...and I sprinted. He was a great support. By the way, Amer has lost 100 pounds in the last year, and the half-marathon was his way of celebrating him. He did amazing.



I crossed the finish line, got my finisher's medal. Hugged Sage and Corena and then kept motoring. I had to keep moving so I wouldn't plummet my heart rate. Amer tried to hand me a hypothermia blanket, but I just walked away to do a round of officer's square. By the time I came back, I forgot all about the blanket. Still soaked to the core, and now cooling off rapidly, my fingers went completely numb.







I got a post-race leg massage. I had to sign a release form, but my fingers wouldn't wrap around the pen, so Corena filled it out for me. While I had my massage, Sage laid on the ground under my face and talked to me. It was cute.

While driving home with Sage, I started to shake. I mean shake. Not just a little shudder. I was shaking from the very core of my being and I was cold beyond belief. Sage called Bill at home and asked him to get some blankets and hot chocolate ready. I got home, pealed off the wet clothes, and climbed under the blankets. It took nearly two hours for the shaking to completely stop. When I got the feeling in my fingers back, I reached for my laptop and wikipedia'd "hypothermia". I'm pretty sure I had stage one Hypothermia. Bill and the kids took great care of me. They took turns snuggling with me to warm me up. Jackson thought it was funny, because I was shaking so much, he was shaking too.

My time was 2 hours 26 minutes, which is exactly the time I ran my last half-marathon in 2003. I had expected to do much better (at least 2:15, so I was disappointed.) Amer did 2:09, Karen did 2:07, and Sandy came in under 2 hours. No pics of Sandy or Karen, because Sandy was a hypothermic too, so they went home immediately. Now, all of us work together, so we were a funny sight to see on Monday in the office. We were all walking very slowly and with a LOT of pain.

After a week of post-race recovery, I registered for the St John Marathon, which is in September. Even if it rains, it surely can't be that cold. I also registered for a Running Room half-marathon 16-week training clinic. It starts on June 1st. Last week, I ran a 5 km run for Brain Tumor research, with Corena, in 32 minutes. I have a race this Sunday coming. I'm going to try to do it in 30 minutes. I also went back to my weight-training class. My lesson learned is that I need more strength training, in order to get a longer stride. Hey, what can I say? I'm a work in progress. :-)