Odot Half Race Report

Last fall, after completing the Fall Colours Half Marathon, where I posted a 1:49:52, I pronounced to Cliff that I wanted to do a sub-1:40 half in the 2009 Ottawa Race Weekend. While knocking off  9 minutes in a few months might have sounded  a little overambitious, I was pretty sure that I could do it.

Fast forward to this past Sunday: Alisha (Cliff s brothers girlfriend)  and I drove to the race site around 7:30, and I dropped my bag off for a quick warm-up before I met up with the TJ and Cliff . I felt pretty good in the morning; relaxed and not too stressed…and thankfully didn’t have to use the washroom as the lineup would have taken me as long as the race did! Cliff had signed up to be the pace bunny for my goal time of 1:40 so I was excited to be running with him, though it did add a little element of  more pressure as well, trying to impress the bf! So, the first challenge of the day as we made our way to our corral was to actually enter the corral! People were packed like sardines where we needed to enter and so we had to jump a fence to get into position.

Then we were off! Our plan was simple: run 4:44 pace for 21.1 km…not too hard eh? We started off slightly fast, as is always the case in the beginning of a race when the adrenaline is pumping. However, we settled into a nice rhythm on the 2nd km. With Cliff wearing bunny ears, there were a lot of people wanting to follow him, especially one French guy,Patrick, who was sticking right to Cliffs side. I took a backseat and just cruised behind all the runners trying to get close to him. All was going smoothly until the 6km mark, where I got a HUGE stitch…like I’m talking, knife-slowly-impaling-me pain! I wasn’t going to let it slow me down though so I breathed through it and then caught up with the group again. The day was slightly on the hot side at about 20 degrees, though I didn’t seem to notice the heat as much as some people did. The race wound through Gatineau, up and down some rollers, before entering back onto the Ottawa side to run along the famous Rideau Canal. There were throngs of fans to cheer us on, and of course, they LOVED seeing the bunny…one even called him ‘the hot bunny’…lucky I was running, missy,and didn’t have time to stop  lol

Anyway, I was cruising along just a few feet behind Cliff and his newfound buddy Patrick and being ok with the pace. I knew if I could just stay with them that I would make my time. Then, around the 15 km  mark I passed one of my good friends running in the marathon, and it was obvious she needed a little support, so I paused a few seconds to give her some encouragement. By the time I was back running, Cliff ’s bunny ears were about 250 m up the road, and from then on I was trying to chase them down.  I managed to maintain my speed, though I was starting to feel the effects of pounding pavement and the heat. I was still running the same pace, watching the soft pink ears bob in the distance, but it wasn’t pretty! As I looked at my watch with 800m left, it said 1:38:XX and I knew that I probably wasn’t quite going to get my time. I did somewhat sprint for a few hundred  meters down the chute, but it was just a little too much time to make up and I crossed with a chip time of 1:40:48.

So not quite my goal, but pretty close! I was pretty pleased with the result, given the circumstances of the day. I also was pretty ecstatic to realize that I was 13th in my age category and 90th woman overall, and that I had taken 15minutes off of my time from the same race a year ago!

Things that I learned from this race is that I can push myself body from the start and  push through the pain  instead of holding back, but I also learned  that  sometimes, there are things (like friends in need of a hug) that are more important than a time on a clock!

For now, I am enjoying a couple days off of running and also enjoying the start of my summer break, until this weekend when we are going to Tremblant for the second  5 Peaks race!

Happy swimin/bikin/runnin!