A Cold Sunday Morning for the NB Fall Class Half

A Cold Sunday Morning for the NB Fall Class Half

A cold, cold, cold, Sunday morning for the NB Fall class half marathon at UBC just 6 weeks after my first half…but at least this time it wasn’t raining at all. I had a feeling it was going to be a great day for me. I had a nice early start with breakfast, a nice drive to UBC, rock star parking, and overall felt very relaxed.

This time I didn’t put a time goal for myself. I was still dealing with some lingering injuries and had only done one 15k run and one 18k run plus a few short runs in the 6 weeks from my last race. I figured if I ran in around the 2-hour mark that would be fine with me.

This race is a double loop race of 11.1 km and 10km. I had spoken to some people prior to the race and on that morning that they did not like the double loop but I thought of it as just another run and I was looking forward to doing it. I would usually carry water with me on my long runs but I found this race to be well organized. I took advantage of the multiple water stations scattered throughout the course.

I had my music playing with my running app on my blackberry (endomondo) all set and ready to go. The race started and I wanted to go out nice and easy. I felt good at the start and I was hoping to run around a 5:45min/km pace and to my surprise, I was at 24:59 at the 5km mark. I felt good but I wanted to slow down a bit so my injuries wouldn’t creep up on.

On my previous half marathon, my halfway mark split time was 61mins, so I thought that I would be somewhere in that vicinity. But to my surprise, at the 10km mark, I was only at 51:28. Right then I knew that I had a chance to have a new personal best and I wanted to go for it.

Then around the 13km mark and the lingering injury to my right foot decided to make an appearance. Here we go again. For a moment I thought that this would really hinder my ability to make a new personal best after running a great 10km thus far. But I decided that I was going to ignore it and keep on running the pace that got me to this point. I was able to put mind over matter and continue along feeling strong. I think what helped was the timing of the Rocky movie theme song that started playing on my blackberry. It’s amazing how music can push someone to go, go, go…and I did.

Coming into the last 3km I turned it up a notch and wanted to finish strong. Crossing the finish line was a great feeling when I looked up at the clock to see 1:52:15 (Official chip time was 1:51:55) A new Personal Best on a day where I was just going to run to completion. I was greeted at the finish line by a colleague of mine at Kintec, Jon, who was there taking pictures and cheering on Jackie and myself.

I waited for a couple of runners from my run clinic, which I teach at the Kintec Port moody, to finish the 10k and a half. It was great to see them afterwards as we enjoyed some chilli in the post-race celebrations. A great experience and a great race and I look forward to doing this one again next year.