I woke up this morning at the crack of 4 AM to the lullaby of of one of my roommates rearranging his room above me. After failing to fall back asleep, I decided to read the archives of triathlete magazine for a few hours until it would be appropriate to eat breakfast. The early wakeup certainly meant that I had a tonne of time, so I ended up getting to the race site just after 7 for an 8:30 start.
My warm up consisted of a quick jog, lots of dynamic stretching and ejecting a few litres of mucus at high velocities from my body that had built up over the past week and were finally loosened up. I downed a gel and headed to the start line.
Start lines at medium sized races like the Waterloo Half are interesting places. Knowing I did not want to set the pace and break the wind, I tried not to be at the very front, but it turns out all the other fast runners didn't want to do that either. Everybody seemed too shy to put their toes on the line, so I manned up and lead the race out of the gates.
My lead lasted about 500 meters. My watch told me I was running 3:30's and I knew that was too fast, despite how easy it felt with the right dosage of adrenaline. I ended up backing of so much that it was almost painful to a nice 3:50 min/km pace. Jeff Beech (I think) took the lead and disappeared for the win in 1:17 or so, leaving me and another guy my age to duke it out. After a few kilometers we were joined by Mike Archibald, middle aged guy in blue and guy in black who later disappears off the face of the planet (maybe he DNF'd?).
The five of us ran as group for six or seven kilometers, trading pulls at the front down a rolling, windy road. They started to push the pace gradually from 4:00 min/km down to 3:55 and finally 3:50's. A coughing fit forced me to make the decision to back off and run my own race, having planned on staying between 4:00 and 4:05 for the majority of the day.
As they pulled away from me, my initial reaction was "oh crap, I'm being dropped. I'm having a bad day. Might as well pack it in." Then I looked at my average pace and saw that I'd been averaging 3:55 over the first 10 km. That put things in perspective and I forced myself to be content with having run slightly faster than planned. I ran the next 5 or 6 kilometers alone, barely able to see the group ahead of me, churning out 4:05's and 4:10's and waiting for something to happen up the road in my favour.
In a valley between two hills around kilometer 15 or 16, I saw Mike Archibald laying on the side of the road, stretching and it was clear he'd ran into trouble. At this point I thought I was taking over 5th place, but due to unknown reasons, I was actually in 4th. At the same time, guy in blue also came into sight and my watch told me he was around 55 seconds ahead of me. My new goal was to widdle that away which took less time than expected, because he walked an aid station.
The course has a quick out and back to finish off kilometer 16. I like out and backs because you get to stare down your competition, see how close you are to them and gage how they look. Guy my age missed the turn around (it was pretty poorly marked), so he was now only around 15 or 20 seconds up on me. Guy in blue was maybe another 10 seconds ahead of guy my age. They both looked like they were in pretty rough shape--slouching forward and landing heavily on their feet.
It was around this point where I realized my feet were hurting a lot. It turns out I got blisters just behind my big and 2nd toes in the quarter to loony range.
I dropped my pace to around 4:00-4:05 min/km at kilometer 17 and closed the gap on both of them on a nice long uphill (probably climbing at more like 4:15 or so). Guy my age got dropped on the hill and guy in blue sat on my shoulder.
I tested him with a couple of surges and it became clear that he wasn't getting dropped and that I was in no position to run 3:50s for 4 km, so I decided to back off a bit and collect myself. He was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, so I figured between that and my youth, I'd be able to out sprint him to the line.
I ran in the middle of the sidewalk (we weren't racing on the road by this point, due to traffic) so that he wouldn't be able to pass me unless he really, really wanted to. We came to the last 500 meters together, where the policewoman at the intersection told us to stay on the sidewalk until we were at the entrance to Bechtel Park where the finish was.
I made sure I was in front and in the inside lane for all of the corners and just before the finish line came into sight, I gritted my teeth an went for it. Then I came around the corner and saw how far from the line I was.
My burst of speed faded momentarily and I immediately thought of a race earlier this season where I had gone too early and been out sprinted. Not wanting to repeat this, and not knowing where guy in blue was, I pushed through yet another wall of pain and made another go at the line.
I won the sprint and took 2nd place overall and first in my age group in approximately 1:26.
It turns out that it was a good thing I put two sprints in because there guy my age had hung on and another guy had came from behind to finish within 15 seconds or so of me. Congrats to guy in blue for a solid 3rd place and Jeff Beech for spanking us all. I'll link the results when the get posted on sportstats.
PS Thanks to my grand parents Robbie and Bev for the sweet GPS watch. It has been an incredibly useful training and racing tool.
http://chiptimeresults.com/resultsreader.php?y=2011&r=waterloomarathonH.htm
PS Thanks to my grand parents Robbie and Bev for the sweet GPS watch. It has been an incredibly useful training and racing tool.
http://chiptimeresults.com/resultsreader.php?y=2011&r=waterloomarathonH.htm
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