Race Results Part 1 – the numbers
I won’t hold you all in suspense. I managed to run my half in the faster time that I had hoped for! I have a lot to say about this run, both for good and bad so I’ll be breaking up the report of the race into two posts. Today I’ll talk about the numbers, and only look factually. Tomorrow’s post will look at the emotions behind those numbers since this was by far the most emotional race I have ever run.
My final time on my garmin when I crossed the finish line was 2:21:57 which means I beat my goal time by 25 seconds. Being the silly girl I am (and so filled with emotions) I hit lap instead of stop after I crossed the finish. Then I got my medal and told a nice ambulance man that I was fine (but that’s for asking) and then realized my mistake and went to stop my watch at 2:22:46 but again hit lap instead. I didn’t notice this until we were almost at the car. So I had to drop the last lap off my garmin, but luckily the settings let you go in and adjust things so I subtracted the last laps and all was well with the world.
My chip time was 2:21:56 which makes sense since I started at the back of the pack and took a while to get through the start line. I crossed the finish at the official clock time of 2:22:29. See, Steve took a nice proof photo for me. My official race results are as follows and show a MAJOR improvement from 2010 when I ran the race after Lillian was born. (2012 numbers don’t include people who didn’t show but 2010 do).
- 35/42 for women aged 20-29 (2010 it was 54/61)
- 119/155 for women in the race (2010 it was 178/200)
- 258/299 overall (2010 it was 338/364)
- 2:21:56 finish (2010 it was 2:48:55)
So the timing for this race was fine. I fed the baby at 9:30pm last night and she slept through the night for me. I woke up at 4:30am because she peeped in her sleep and had to go to the bathroom. After that I fell asleep until 5:30am and then drifted in and out of sleep until 6:15am when I couldn’t stay in bed anymore. Got up and ate the oatmeal I’d made last night, drank my tea, took my time and then went upstairs to nurse the baby. Since everyone was up by 7:15am my husband dropped me off at the race just before 8am and then headed home. I wandered around to warm up and hit the bathroom (twice – silly tummy and nerves). As the runners got ready I headed to the back of the group (as usual) and waited for the start.
The weather for the race was lovely. We had sun with no clouds, but it was chilly at the start, and then moved up to 11 degrees. The wind was not so nice. We had 25-30km/hr winds and they played a large part in my run.
As the race started I had to go slowly to get through the starting line. There were a lot of runners and not a very wide path for us all. Once I crossed through the start gate people spread out a bit but I still had to weave in and out of several people and was running slower than I wanted or planned to for the first km. After that I got enough room to run at the pace I had planned. You can see all my Garmin results at the bottom.
Kilometer 2-4 went fine but then when we turned a bend and disaster struck. We had to run from 4.5km-12.5km straight into the wind. Usually when I run my first 5k are my second fastest with the middle 10 being the slowest and my final 5k the fastest. This headwind took everything in me to keep at the pace I needed to hit my goal. It was brutal. It slowed me down despite the nice downhill sections. I had to really fight to maintain my pace. Last time I ran this race I needed to stop and use the washroom at 13km but this time when I hit that spot I looked at my watch and knew if I stood any chance of hitting my goal a pee break was no longer an option so I didn’t go and kept running.
One thing about the race I didn’t like was how off their distances were. I pushed lap whenever I passed a marker (and for the record markers 10, 11 and 12 were no where to be found) and had set my watch to automatically lap at 1.05km so if I missed one (or they did) I wouldn’t lose a lap for my average lap pace calculations. As you can see from my numbers below they were off several times and the lack of signs meant that some km came up short because the lap was set to go off at 1.05km. It was nice to catch up on my average pace by having a few 5 minute times but I would rather they were labeled properly and I not had to deal with that. They also said water stations would be every 3km but around 10km I’d already hit 4 of them and then at the end the last one I remember was at km 16 or 17 so that was not pleasant.
Here are my Garmin results for the race. As you can see the time is a bit higher than my 2:21:57 above but like I said I hit lap not stop and then stood still while I got my medal and water from the nice ambulance man. That’s okay since we all know I did it.
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