In the lead-up to the race, it seemed that something was telling me not to run it. A week before the race I dropped a metal vacuum attachment on one of my toes and cut and bruised it. Then the Wednesday before the race I slipped on some loose gravel while out on a training run and ended up with road-rash on my knee and elbow (also making a previous wrist injury worse). Finally I contracted some sort of stomach bug and spent Friday night being violently ill.
I was determined to run this race. Ottawa Race Weekend is the special race; the one on my calendar that I am most excited to do, running around our beautiful city with 100,000 spectators cheering you on. It's a great celebration of running and I have enjoyed it every year since I started running in 2008.
I spent all of Saturday trying to recover, taking on fluids and electrolytes and getting into the right frame of mind. I knew that if I ran but didn't feel well I could always just pop it into cruise control and just run, take in the sights and sounds and use it as a running celebration for my 10th Half Marathon.
On Sunday morning I felt fine, if not a little tired. I had a good breakfast and headed out to find a parking space in the Byward Market. Soon enough I was at the race site and it was the usual circus of people chatting nervously, stretching, lining up for porta-potties, going through their paces, getting into the zone, and all the other things people do before a race. I headed straight for the porta-potty line-up as even though I felt fine, I didn't really trust my stomach.
Getting to my assigned corral (orange) was a bit tricky having to climb the barrier and then squeeze through the crowds. This is one thing I wish they would manage better, as usual even though I was in the orange corral, a quick look around showed that runners from various other corrals were all packed in there with me clearly ignoring their corral assignment or just plain oblivious to it.
I was glad when the horn went off to start the race as it was getting pretty hot and sweaty in there, predictably it was a slow start with runners ducking and diving everywhere to find a space piece of tarmac to run on. My plan was to try something close to race pace for the first 5-10km and take it from there. The first 5km felt fine and I was encouraged by this and started to think maybe the stomach issues I had were in the past.
Splits for 1st 5km
1km - 4:53
2km - 4:45
3km - 4:49
4km - 4:51
5km - 4:48
As we climbed the slight slope off Carling and onto Sherwood I started to sense that my stomach problems were not completely resolved. I started to feel some disturbances and I nearly lost my breakfast on Fairmount Ave. Then it was time to take my first gel at the 7km mark just before we turned onto Wellington St. It was after taking the gel and heading onto Wellington that I started to really feel the heat. It wasn't too hot out there, but I was overheating and made sure to dump water into my cap at the next water station to cool me off a bit. My pace started to drop and I tried to fight it, but all of a sudden I didn't feel like I had any energy. I am guessing that the stomach bug had taken more out of me that I had thought (or dared to admit). Even though I hit the 10km mat a respectable time of 49:43 I knew I was getting slower and would be quite a bit off the pace for the rest of the race.
Splits for 2nd 5km
6km - 4:51
7km - 4:54
8km - 5:01
9km - 5:07
10km - 5:20
Then it came, the feeling that I was dreading, my intestines were cramping badly and I knew I would have to make a porta-potty stop. I saw some in the distance and in the time it took me to run up to them I had an internal discussion as to whether I would stop or not. By the time I got there I was virtually waddling so I had to stop. It seemed like I was in there for an eternity but in reality it was about a minute and a half. When I rejoined the race I couldn't regain my pace so I decided just to run at my happy pace and finish the race instead of risking illness or worse. I cruised along the parkway, up and over the hill and into Hull. At 14km I decided not to take my second gel as it was clear that the first one had gone straight through me and I wasn't really exerting myself that much to need another.
Splits for 3rd 5km
11km - 6:57 (porta-potty)
12km - 5:26
13km - 5:32
14km - 5:31
15km - 5:47
After a little bit of a slow-down over the short hills of downtown Hull I found my pace falling again, I felt like I didn't have an ounce of energy, I knew I would finish, but I wasn't sure how long it would take. I made sure to stop and hug my kids and wife when I saw them at the Museum of Civilisation and then gladly grabbed two sponges to help cool myself down. Coming off the Alexandra bridge I saw a couple of Running Maniacs (Miss Smiles and JoJo) in the cheering section and briefly said "Hi" and then continued on to the water station on Mackenzie where I decided to stop and make sure and take in plenty of water. The crowds along the canal were amazing, I took it all in and just cruised to the finish, safe in the knowledge that Half Marathon number 10 was about to go in the books, regardless of the finish time I was enjoying myself and glad that I was able to run after what had happened on Friday.
Splits for last 6.1km
16km - 5:45
17km - 6:01
18km - 6:00
19km - 5:57
20km - 6:01
21km - 5:36
0.32km - 1:42
I did manage to crank it up just a little bit for the finish and hit the line at 1:55:15, an entirely respectable time given my circumstances.
The finish line area was very well organised with people with hoses to help runners cool off and then drinks and snacks before lining up to get a medal. I met Mike as I was grabbing some water and we chatted about our races. He had been carrying an injury so like me had run a similar race, testing out the pace in the early going and then easing back later on to make sure and finish the race.
Today my legs feel fine, which in a way is pretty encouraging, being able to run 1:55 and it barely registering physically. I will push on from here, my training won't go to waste, I have a 10km race coming up in 3 weeks time.
