From Sea to Farm

 We headed to British Columbia for an extended week to attend Amber & Eric’s wedding, some swimming in the ocean and even managed to do some running! We left with great memories, but since this is a running blog I’ll just mention details about running from the trip: The first morning in Vancouver I joined Anais, Amber and Lisa for a 10-mile run along the sea walk around Stanley park in Vancouver..ah the ocean, amazing!  The next day I went for another run along False Creek to English Bay and back for about 7 miles or so, it was very hot for the West coast but oh-so-nice.  I think those runs were on Saturday, Sunday and I didn’t run until Thursday next – just a quick 5 miles in the surprisingly hilly Cedar area on Vancouver Island. A couple of days later and we were back home in Ottawa; landing late in the evening we got out the airport and were greeted by the most humid heat. Crazy hot, what a difference from B.C! 

Kids' dryer is my favourite Stanley Park attraction...

At this point, the big race of the autumn was about two months away so I realized it was time to get training again. So I jumped straight into training for the big race in September and ran Monday and Tuesday, even though on Wednesday I was due to race in the most anticipated Experimental Farm 10-miler. On the day, we were spared the humidity but it was still some 25 degrees at the time of the race. I was really looking forward to measuring myself against the three guys who had finished ahead of me in last year’s race and figured a time around 1:04 (last year’s winning time) could be accomplished, but with the humidity gone, the mind started to wander believing I could go down towards 1:02. At the starting line I was disappointed to see that the runners from last year hadn’t entered this time around. So who would be the competition? Difficult to say because concurrent with the 10-miler a three-person team relay was taking place and it was impossible to know who was racing the relay or the 10-miler, well, until lap 2 I suppose. Yes, we were about to run 3 laps along the beautiful Experimental farm, so I suppose I was half-expecting a centaur or two to toe the starting line, but what I wasn’t expecting was to see this monstrosity of man beside me with muscles like the Hulk, surely a triathlete and a serious one of that, just hope he’s part of the relay…  Immediately, he took off at an unmaintainable pace, and many runners followed suite, but I was thinking “too fast, I’ll catch you latter” and settled into my own pace around 6:15 min/mile, hoping to step it up during the later miles. Sure enough, before the first of three laps was over I had caught a number of runners, but the monster man had kept on running and clearly was part of the 10-miler, darn. To make matters worse, right on his heels was a veteran runner with an unorthodox running style, who looked like he was barely breaking sweat and chasing him were two other runners that I thought I recognize from past races, then a gap and then there was me. The second lap was agonizing as no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t find the next gear to step it up! I just didn’t have the jump in my step and my pace stayed pretty much even.

The finishing area of the 10-miler at Experimental farm with me coasting home in the center in white and VIP spectator area to the right. I heard floor seats were going for a $1000 on the black market.

 The course has two short out-and-back turns where it is possible to gauge how close/far other runners in front and behind you are, but the distance is deceptive and you feel like people are closer than they actually are. Anyhow, when we passed each other by these points the guy ahead of me kept saying something to me which I think were words of encouragement. Or perhaps he was just trying to confuse me.. No need, after two laps I wasn’t any closer to the guys ahead than after one lap, and when I ran by my superfan Anais I told her I didn’t know what was wrong with me but I just couldn’t get my legs going. Ridiculous, I shouldn’t have been able to talk that much! I prepared for a final push but when I counted how far ahead the competition was, about 35 seconds, I realized I wasn’t going to catch anyone ahead of me apart from people being lapped, so instead of pushing hard I simply cruised for the final 1.5 miles or so finishing in 1:03:14, and 5^th place in the race. Although I was disappointed at first, later on I found out that I had been beaten by two guys who have run 1:13 half-marathons and two others with 10k PBs under 35 min (I did however finish ahead of the 3^rd placed guy in a 10k in April). Most disappointingly is I didn’t enjoy myself anywhere near as much as I did last year when I stepped it up for a final fast lap to sneak into 4^th place with an inferior time of just under 1:09.  I haven’t been doing almost any fast running lately, which I contribute to my rustiness and what I perceived as a lacklustre performance, but with the heat and all it was pretty decent showing after all. If I had just stayed with the faster runners from the start maybe things would have gone differently…In the end I just wasn’t going to dwell on this result; perhaps it wasn’t the result I wanted, but the result that I needed as I immediately ordered myself some “punishment training” and so far so good but more about that later… 

See this link for race results: Official Experimental farm 10-miler race results