Reflection

My first race of 2013 was yesterday.

I entered it because it was a race in the same neck of the woods I grew up in and I thought it would be fun to support the local race. It also didn't hurt that the start and finish line were about 200 meters from my in-law's house so I knew we had a great place to call "home base" if need be.

In the week before the race, many people asked me whether I had a goal in mind for the race. I was adamant that there was NO goal "per say", but that improving on my other 2 official race times would be a great accomplishment - one that I foresaw would be relatively simple for me to accomplish given those 2 races had extenuating circumstances with lead to those results.

I was happy we arrived in Manotick early with lots of time for me to get to the finish line to hopefully see some of my running friends cross the finish line after their 10 and 18k races.

Out of complete coincidence, as I went to grab my phone from the truck, I saw a figure coming up the hill that I recognised... a quick glance downwards proved to confirm this lovely rainbow socked lady was indeed Caroline heading to her last 400 or so meters. I was so happy to be able to drop everything and run to the road to cheer her on, give her a high ten and send her off to the lovely road downhill (literally) to the finish.

After heading down myself, the pre-race jitters began. I managed to see another running friend Katie and her family after her race too... and remember thinking, I hope someday I can look that fresh after completing an 18k race!

I saw my mother in the crowd and went to say hello before going to the washroom once more and then heading to the warm up and then into the coral to await our start.

Around 5 minutes before the start of the race, I saw Mark and the kids walking over and got to get my good luck kisses from the kids before checking, double checking and triple checking that my music was ready and my interval apps was ready to go.

When the crowd starting the race, I felt fresh and the excitement of the race carried me down Doctor Leach Drive. There were a lot of high school kids participating and watching them blow out of the start gates was inspiring. I found myself a bit winded approaching the first k marker and allowed myself to look at my app to see my time thus far. This is when I realised the first mistake of the race... my speed was awesome... that first kilometer was done in 6:30, but there was NO WAY I could keep that speed up! I tried to slow myself down, but even so, as I crossed the 2k marker, I was still fast - my watch had me at 13:20... which meant my second k was still a sub-7 minute kilometer.

This is when my brain started playing tricks. And things started falling apart.

the defeatist in me was saying: I'm out of breath, I'm hot, and I still have 3 k to go...
the optimist in me was yelling - you just ran 1/3rd of your run in 13 minutes! Even if you can keep a DECENT pace from now on, you are going to do awesome!

I kept going. I tried to ignore both the extreme comments I had going through my head and started my visualisation... "you only have 500 meters until the water station... you can walk there... you have this! "

That worked until the 3 k mark but by then more and more people around me were walking... and I let the defeatist win... "if they are walking, why can't you?". I tried with all my might to keep up with some sort of intervals... but it seemed all over the place to me... sometimes running for 5 minutes before walking again, other times, only running 200 meters before walking again. My hamstring was bothering me too... which didn't help much with the stop and go of that 4th km.

I had promised Mark I would text him at the 4k marker. And when I saw it, it became my beacon again. I sent my message and knew I was only around 6 minutes from them, and about 8 from the finish.

And then... I saw THE HILL.

For some reason still unknown to me, the markers on the route were putting us past Beaverwood (where I had expected to turn), and instead continuing on the same finish path as the 18 and 10k racers up a nasty hill on Whitewood and then continuing up another hill on Colony before turning down Maple and to the finish.

I felt discouraged and sore and frustrated at that point, and had to walk up half the hill due to my hamstring hurting so much.

As I rounded the road to Colony I told myself to suck it up and that I could do this. I was about to turn a corner and see my family and then it was all downhill to the finish. I was pushing myself because I wanted NEEDED to see them.

As I rounded the bend from Maple to Beaverwood I caught a glimpse of Mark with the camera in front of his eyes, my mom cheering me on with a beaming smile and Madie and Joshua yelling "go, momma, go!" from the sidelines. From that turn onward, I didn't feel my hamstring at all. I was in pure bliss and that moment will likely be on top of my running memories forever.

As I approached the family, I waved and blew a kiss to Madie, and asked Joshua if he was joining me for the last leg. In the larger races, there are no openings in the fences between the route and the finish line and I was so happy to have him run with me to the end.

There was a man probably about 100 m ahead of me in a green shirt, my son, god love him, said to me "hey momma, let's beat that guy in the green!"... and because he was talking to me and I had taken my headphones out, I then heard the cheering... 4 of my LIO friends had stuck around (unbeknownst to me) to cheer me on... and cheer they did! WHAT A RUSH!!!!

We crossed the finish line with arms up high. They even gave Joshua a medal for crossing along with me!

I met up with friends and family alike and celebrated in the finish.

At the time, I did not yet know my time. And I am embarrassed to say that once I went to the stats site, I immediately felt like a turtle who was going back into her shell.

SOMEHOW, I managed to go from the strongest first half to the worst time. 41.30 a minute more than either of my runs the year before...

I felt... defeated...

It took the whole rest of the day and evening before I had the guts to put my time into my training log. I didn't want to write it down - because that would be me admitting that I had BLOWN it.

But when I DID finally put it in the log and mapped out the race route... I found out that the race was actually 5.55k instead of 5k. By making that little change, they had managed to add a half a km onto our time... which is NOT reflected on our finishes... All of the sudden... my final time isn't so bad... doing 5.55k in 41.30 makes my average pace at 7.28... which makes my 5k time somewhere around 36.40.

and THAT is something I am proud of.