Category: race report

fitness · race report · running

Tracy feels strong after Around the Bay 30K

Tracy I7 Comments

Sunday was the Around the Bay 30K in Hamilton, Ontario. It’s a road race famous for a hilly final 10K, unpredictable weather conditions, and, as it’s slogan reminds us, for being “Older than Boston.” Anita and I have been prepping for this all winter, though we followed different training plans.

I adjusted my distance training for intensity after I got back from India. I blogged that I was nervous about that approach, but I stuck with it anyway, trusting my coach, Linda. Anita stuck with the distance plan, doing super long Sunday runs up to 28K. We went to Hamilton the day before so we could pick up our race kits and take it easy (hotel with a hot tub!). We met up with Helia, another friend who was doing the 30K with us.

Both Anita and I were surprisingly relaxed about the event. I didn’t feel a single bit of nerves or fear that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Anita’s goal was just to finish. Helia wanted to finish “without dying.” I was a bit more ambitious, wanting to beat my previous time (from 2014) by almost 10 minutes to come in at 3:30 instead of 3:40-ish.

The weather forecast kept changing–going from 6 degrees C down to a high of 2C by the night before, and when we woke up it had snowed overnight. As we walked to the race start (about 2K from our hotel), I predicted that the person with the most optimistic attitude (me!) would probably end up either complaining first (in fact, none of us ever complained) or falling behind (which I did).

It’s one of those races with a big buzz at the start line because there are something like 30,000 people gathering to do a thing that is one of those bonding experiences.

Image description: three smiling women (left to right: Helia, Anita, Tracy) at the start line for the Around the Bay 30K, all wearing jackets, Helia in sunglasses and cap, Anita with a headband, Tracy with cap and buff, other runners in the background. Overcast skies.

My strategy for any race is to divide it up into sections. For a 30K the most obvious division is into 3 10Ks. The course literally does go Around the Bay for 30K, taking us out of the city into the industrial areas that remind you that yes, Hamilton is a steel town, along the highway, through middle class then super wealthy residential neighborhoods, up a mean hill, then back past the start and into the First Ontario Centre Arena where the finish line awaits. Because it goes around the bay, the wind changes quite a bit, and it can get kind of chilly at times.

But despite waking up to snow, the roads were dry the full distance of the course and though it might have been cold at times without my running jacket, the jacket was just enough to keep me from getting cold in the wind. It’s always a relief to have dressed “just right.”

So, back to the 3x10K idea. Really, the first 10K was over before we knew it. I ran along at a comfortable pace, mostly with Anita and Helia, who were quite chatty for that first 10K. I try not to talk too much because it takes my energy away. But I ran just a few feet ahead of them and listened to their conversation for quite a few kilometres. A couple of times Angie, the clinic leader from my first Running Room Around the Bay Clinic in 2014, caught up to us and ran along for a bit until she stopped to take a photo. (her strategy was to have as much fun as possible). Then she would catch up again, run ahead, and we’d pass her taking more photos along the course.

Things got quieter at about the 15K mark, but we still kept up what felt like a reasonable pace. I didn’t have my Garmin with me, but I hit start on the chrono feature of my Timex, so if I wanted to, I could check how long we had been out. I mostly didn’t check. At about 20K, we entered some swishy residential neighbourhood, and that’s when the rolling hills started. They’re really not so bad, especially after the majority of the previous 20K being flat, and for every up you get a down to catch your breath. I stuck to my training plan of not walking up the hills even if it meant taking it to a slow jog.

It all felt good up to about 25K. Just before that point, Helia, who is a bit younger and a bit faster than us, finally decided to break away (I was encouraging her to do it sooner but she worried that if she turned on the turbo too early the hills might defeat her). At about 25k, there is a gradual up hill on a major road. It’s long, but not steep. It was there where my legs started to tighten up and I told Anita to leave me. I knew I had to stop and stretch it out because my quads felt as if they were going to seize right up at any second. It was a new feeling for me and I didn’t want to leave it unaddressed or make Anita lose her momentum on my account.

After stretching, I made it to the top of that hill without walking. Everyone always talks about the final hill in Around the Bay as the killer. The last time I did ATB. road construction changed the route and took that hill out. So I had not experienced it before. When I got to it, I didn’t realize I was there yet. I saw Anita up ahead, walking, so I gunned it (in relative terms!) to catch up, but as soon as I got there she was about to start running again, and I was having those “quads-about-to-seize-up” feelings in my legs again. So we said hello-good-bye. Anita disappeared up the hill and into the tunnel. I stopped and stretched again. And I basically had to give up my running up the hill thing at that point. I walked to the top. Maybe it was on account of being dehydrated, I thought. So I took some water. Or maybe I needed food. So I popped a chew.

The last 3-4 K are bit of a blur. I passed the Grim Reaper at the graveyard just near the 3K aid station where I slowed down to take some water and Gatorade. At that point my legs were pretty much done but I remembered Linda’s advice to keep to at least a jog. My cardio strength felt great. If my legs would have cooperated, I would have been able to go in to high gear for the final 3K. But the most I could do was keep moving.

Linda is big on counting rhymes as motivators. I couldn’t remember any of hers, so I made up my own, which I basically repeated for the final 3K. It went like this: “1-2-3-4, I CAN do more! 5-6-7-8, my legs FEEL GREAT!” It was simple and motivating, even though I did debate with the last part a few times. The internal dialogue went, “they do NOT feel great.” And then “shhhh…they feel great considering you’ve run almost 30K.” And then I started the rhyme over again. And again. And again. I didn’t have to contest the first part. I knew for a fact that I could do more, that I could finish that 30K without having to walk into the arena. Instead of listening to music, I stayed present to the event and that helped me stay focused rather than zone out.

The final stretch of ATB is flat and not especially picturesque. But you can see exactly where you need to go. It’s the only course I’ve ever done that ends inside. You approach the arena and then run down a fairly steep ramp and the next thing you know you’re inside, entering the arena, crossing the finish line. It’s kind of amazing how when I do these events I have just enough in my tank to get me that far. After that I was sort of staggering around, a little bit confused, maybe with a silly smile on my face because; DONE! and… FOOD.

The first thing they do is give you a bottle of water. Then someone handed me an empty grocery bag and then I entered the food area where they threw all sorts of things into my bag. And suddenly, I was really hungry and there was nothing I wanted more than that banana. Well, maybe I wanted to lie down a little more than I wanted the banana, but I knew I wouldn’t make it back up again, so I ate the banana as I was going upstairs to find Anita and Helia at our appointed spot.

I found Anita, or she found me. I desperately needed to stretch. We found Helia and her family sitting in the stands. Thankfully her husband drove the van to the venue because I do not think I would’ve made it the 2K back to the hotel if we had to walk.

We basically spent the rest of the day eating and not being able to walk. All in all, it was a brilliant event and though I had a tough final 5K, I call it a strong finish because I finished mentally more strong than ever before.

And not just during that final 5K. I was telling my friend Tara last night that I literally feel like a stronger person today than I did on Friday. When I do these things, like Around the Bay, that aren’t for anyone other than myself, it reminds me that I am strong and capable and confident and even sort of fearless. I loved my attitude throughout the race. I think this is the first time that I was with people and didn’t complain even once. Even when I had to stop and stretch I didn’t complain. I just got pragmatic about what I needed and took care of it.

I wouldn’t take this to mean that I’m rushing out to do another Around the Bay 30K (even though, since I beat my previous time I could actually get a 10% discount if I register for next year). I shuffled around today, having some difficulty getting up out of chairs and so forth. I have decided that my favourite distance is 10K. I like training for it and I enjoy the 10K events. I’m happy enough do to the occasional half marathon too. I mean, Sunday’s race didn’t feel difficult until the 25K mark, so if it had been a half, ending at 21K, I could have turned up the volume for that final bit.

This week is for rest and recovery. Stretching. Physio. Baths. Yoga. Gentle running later in the week. Sleep. Doing what makes sense this week also helps me feel strong.

What’s your definition of a strong finish?

Race Report – Bettina’s New Year’s Eve 8k
Happy New Year! · race report · racing · running · traveling · winter

Race Report – Bettina’s New Year’s Eve 8k

bettinathenomad

In 2017, I started dabbling in running one or the other race, and discovered a wonderful one: the Bilbao – Rekalde San Silvestre 8k, which takes place on New Year’s Eve. My husband is from the Basque Country, so we spend New Year’s there every year. I had so much fun in 2017 that I decided to run it again on the last day of 2018. This time, I roped in two friends to run it with me. Overall, just under 2,500 other runners had the same idea. And it was even better than the year before!

I’ll get into this in a moment, but first, there are a couple of other things I’d like to talk about. The first is the reason I love this race: while there are of course some people who are there for the competition, the vast majority are there for the fun. People run alone, in groups, with their families, or dressed up in all kinds of costumes. My favourite this year were the two guys who came dressed as a trainera (a Basque type of rowing boat). In the head picture of this official blog post you can see them! There’s also a summary video of the race that gives you a good idea of the vibe (you really only need to watch the first half, the second half is more boring, unless you want to see how the winners did):

The second thing I wanted to talk about is slightly less fun: it’s the gender split of the race. There are only two categories, male and female, which is a problem unto itself, but the race this year was no less than three-quarters male. That doesn’t seem like a particularly healthy split to me. In fact, even in comparison to marathons in the US (a statistic I could find quite quickly), it’s quite poor. I’m not totally sure what is going on here. It’s a fairly short race (below 10k), not a very serious one, and cheap (10 euros) so it sends all the right accessibility signals, or so one would think… and yet. I was intrigued, so I looked into the data for Spain (from a few years ago) a bit. Generally, women are quite a bit more sedentary than men. For example, in the 25-44 age bracket, 55% of women never (!) exercise, compared to 41% of men. On the European scale*, Spain sits in a middling position overall regarding physical activity, but the difference by sex (again, the data is binary) is comparatively large. Possible explanations would be entirely speculative at this point – but our work, fit feminist friends, is not done.

For now, let’s focus on why I loved the San Silvestre even more this time than the year before. In 2017, it poured with rain throughout the entire race. This time around, we got spectacular blue skies (see picture below) and a perfect running temperature of just over 10°C. It felt amazing!

Runners gathering for the San Silvestre run in front of the Guggenheim Bilbao museum, with a spectacularly blue sky and curious onlookers.

Also in 2017, I was still getting into running and quite slow, and I suffered due to the hills along the route. But over the past year, I’ve been working on my hills quite a lot, and my overall running speed has increased. We’d decided to run the race in our pack of three, so the (supposedly) slowest in the group was our pacer – and he wasn’t slow at all! We ran pretty much at the speed I currently train at, so we did very well. It gets even better: the reason we did the time we did was that our first kilometre was really slow due to the masses of people at the start. Meaning that overall, I was actually faster than ever, aside from that first bit! And the really amazing thing is that I could have run even faster – but the way we did it was perfect because we stuck together as a team and had a fabulous time. Mission accomplished!

*There is so much interesting data in that Eurostat graph, I’m going to make it its own separate post, promise!

fitness · Guest Post · race report · racing · running

Left and Right (Guest Post)

Sam B1 Comment

by Amy Kaler

The road is never neutral. You are always moving towards something or away from something, bearing dread, hope, anticipation, longing, as you go. No one is the same at the beginning of the road as at the end.

Roads are also risky. “Highwayman” was once a synonym for the worst sort of thieves, a “roadhouse” is a place where bad things can happen, and when someone titles a novel “The Road”, you know it’s not going to end well. By now, there may be nothing new that can be said about a road – the metaphor itself as exhausted as the travellers.

Speaking of exhausted –

In mid-September, I was running on a road near Banff, Alberta, and I was exhausted. It was my first official road race – Melissa’s Race, 10KM – and along with several thousand other people, I was pushing through rain, snow, sleet, freezing mud, and cold water in all its forms. The weather was not just bad, it was apocalyptic. At the end of the race I ran into a friend who regularly runs Death Marathons and the like, and he used words like “gruelling” and “excruciating”. So now you know I did make it to the end of the road. But I am getting ahead of myself.

By the second kilometre I wanted to give up. My knees hurt, my chest hurt, I could not run uphill in slush and breathe at the same time. I wondered desperately if somewhat dramatically whether it was possible that I would actually die, just fall over and die, in mid-race, and whether that would be better or worse than giving up and revealing myself as a quitter who couldn’t handle the road. This run is supposed to be visually spectacular, circling upward through mountains, but all I could see was the metre right in front of my wet shoes, and the peripheral view of other runners moving steadily past me. My MP3 player with its curated inspirational running music had given up on me a few hundred meters in, so I jammed the cord into my phone and listened to the same six Fleetwood Mac songs over and over. I had to stop. But I had to continue.

After a while I became aware of my feet. At first I noticed my feet because they were not cold, unlike most of the rest of me. Then I became aware of my feet running, side to side, right and left and right, like a pendulum swinging fast while moving forward. The oscillation started to weave into my monotonous survival-focused thoughts. I’m overwhelmed, I can’t keep going. I can do another hundred steps. I can’t do another hundred steps, I’m going to die. I can do another fifty steps. I can’t breathe any more. But I AM still breathing because I’m having this thought which I couldn’t have without oxygen in my brain. I have to stop before we get to the hill. I can keep going up the hill.

Eventually the thoughts narrowed down to I can’t run/I can run. I have to stop/I won’t stop. Left, right, left-and-right. Breathe in, breathe out. I can’t/I can. I have to/I won’t.

Many things invaded my mind, my imagination skittering around a wealth of images because linear thought was not really happening. I was bouncing amongst all the times when we say yes and no, real and unreal, what is and what isn’t, known and unknown. I was Vladimir and Estragon, who can’t go on/ will go on. I was a fresh Marine recruit at boot camp (when I first typed that, I wrote “boot can’t”) marching in cadence: I don’t know/But I’ve been told. I was a hundred therapists and yogis and spiritual teachers breathing: in with the good air, out with the bad.

Am I the only runner in the history of Melissa’s Race to fantasize that I was a yoga teacher? Left, right, left-and-right.

Every step was a question and a choice. Can I? I can. Left side, right side. I did not have the clean precision of a metronome. I was irreducibly organic and visceral, not mechanical. I tripped over roots, skidded on a Dixie cup discarded at one of the water stations and doubled-over a couple of times when I truly couldn’t breathe any more. I kept falling out of rhythm and then falling back into it. Left, right, sideways, then left-and-right again.

I have read that neurologists use diverse forms of bilateral stimulation, alternating sounds or pulses or light on the left side and right side of the body in order to calm erratic nerves and to help people integrate traumatic or awful memories into their present selves. I met no trauma ghosts as I was running, and even now as I write this, the awfulness of the cold and wet has moved away from me, become something I describe rather than something that I feel. But I can easily believe that the left-and-right, one-side-the-other-side, movement helped to draw me through a physically pretty intense experience.

I also believe that this back-and-forth of running opens into a bigger experience of ambivalence and contradiction. I’m in danger/I’m okay. I can/I can’t. I am/I am not. And all the while I am moving forward while I’m tiring out. I am not enjoying this road, but I’m not getting off it either.

You never know how far you can go until you stop, and at last I did stop, with ten kilometres behind me. In the final kilometre, my glasses fogged up so I was running through a fuzzy translucence in which I had to trust that there was an actual road in front of me, which is probably a metaphor for something. At the end of the road, I was indeed not the same person who began it. When I started, I didn’t know if I was the person who could run ten kilometres in terrible weather. I thought I was the person who would give in to the road, who might be humiliated by weakness and failure.

But I did get to the end of the road. I did it one step at a time, but more vividly, I did it step by step by step by step. I have to stop/I can keep going. I can’t breathe/I’m still breathing. I can’t/I did.

Amy Kaler is a professor and associate chair in the department of sociology at the University of Alberta. Her academic work can be found here: https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/amykaler/home?authuser=2. Her nonacademic writing about Edmonton can be found here: https://edmontonseries.wordpress.com/

fitness · motivation · race report · racing · running

Have you amazed yourself lately? Try consistent effort and see where it takes you [aka Tracy’s epic 10K]

Tracy I5 Comments

Image description: Ellen and Tracy selfie after MEC 10K. Ellen on left, blond hair with straight bangs, smiling, white tank; Tracy on right, smiling, short blond hair, sunglasses atop head, smiling, pink and purple tank, white earbuds cord hanging around her neck; trees and parked cars in background.
Image description: Ellen and Tracy selfie after MEC 10K. Ellen on left, blond hair with straight bangs, smiling, white tank; Tracy on right, smiling, short blond hair, sunglasses atop head, smiling, pink and purple tank, white earbuds cord hanging around her neck; trees and parked cars in background.

One thing that I’ve loved about the past six years since Sam and I started our Fittest by 50 Challenge and created this blog to document it is the way I’ve actually amazed myself.  When I was 48 and we were just embarking on challenge, I didn’t think of myself as an athlete at all. And definitely not as a runner.

Well, fast forward six years, well after the end of our challenge (Sam and I hit 50 in August and September 2014, respectively), and just two weeks shy of my 54th birthday. On Saturday morning at the MEC 10K race at Fanshawe Conservation Area I put my summer of 10K training to the test. My last race was in early June when I did the Guelph 10K with Ellen and Violetta. There, I ran with Violetta and had the goal of running a continuous 10K, no walk breaks. My time: 1:10:01.

This time I wanted to break 1:05. That’s a lot to shave off a race time, just so you know. Indeed, I confess to feeling as if it wasn’t going to happen. I trained consistently through the summer, following weekly training plans developed for me by my running coach, Linda from Master the Moments.  They were tough some days, with long interval repeats of 800m to 1K at uncomfortable paces. But I did them.

That’s when I started to amaze myself, actually. I would set out to do one of these interval workouts and think to myself, “Linda has got to be kidding if she thinks I can hit those paces for that length of an interval!” And by the time I had about 6-8 weeks of training under my belt, I was routinely hitting the prescribed paces, often even going faster than she asked me to go for all or almost all of the intervals. And that was despite a hot, muggy, uncomfortable summer.

Linda said to me a few weeks ago that she really thought I hadn’t yet reached my athletic potential. My first thought, “Coaches are supposed to say those sorts of things.” But she actually meant it. She doesn’t like to get too hung up on race time goals, but she believes that consistent effort in training can pay dividends on race day.

So I went into the Saturday race with the hope of breaking 1:05 but lacking the confidence that I would. Ellen came in from Guelph the night before to do the event with me.

Saturday morning was the first day in months that presented perfect running weather. Perfect! Cool but not cold. Light breeze. Zero humidity. When we got to Fanshawe Lake Conservation Area and parked the car we were cutting it close to the start time. We asked someone in the parking lot which was to the start line and she pointed in the right direction and then said, “Are you Tracy from Fit Is a Feminist Issue?” And then she talked about how she’s been following the blog and she likes it and she’s planning on power walking the trail race. I always get a kick out of meeting people who love the blog! So that sort of charged me up and we wished each other well in our respective races.

I am the kind of person who has to pee before movies, classes, runs, and yes, races. So as we walked past the bathrooms I told Ellen I needed to go in and she could go ahead. She said she’d wait but when I got out I couldn’t find her. Now we were really close to the start I thought, so I wandered over the to start area and saw a bunch of people with red race bibs like mine milling about. I milled about with them and Ellen was nowhere to be seen. After a couple of minutes, I asked some one if this was the 10K road race. Guess what they said? “They left a few minutes ago!”

Bam, I was outta there. Looking back, I wonder if that late start without a cohort to run with lit a fire under me that made me not just break 1:05, but come in at 1:04:25, a personal best for me!

I ran strong and continuous for the entire 10K. I eventually did see Ellen on her way back (it was 2x out and back for 5K each time, so we passed each other three times in all). I went in with a few strategies that served me well:

  1. I left my Garmin on my belt and vowed not to look at it after the race started. I wanted to check my stats later but I wanted to run by feel not the external cues of the Garmin, which can mess with my head.
  2. A friend of mine who has done a couple of iron distance triathlons said he gets through them by smiling (I’m sure it takes a little more than that, but whatever). I remembered that and decided smiling would be a good strategy. It wasn’t hard to do because I really did feel amazing on Saturday.
  3. This might sound strange and obvious, but I committed to pushing myself just enough to be able to sustain what felt like a strong pace but not so much that I would lose steam before 10K was over. I figured I could turn on the extra power near the end when I knew I didn’t need to have anything left in the tank.
  4. I absolutely didn’t want to walk at any point, and I made that decision ahead of time so there would be no question if my mind started to play tricks on me.

So, without the Garmin, smiling, pushing my pace, and committing to a continuous run, I ran the fast flat course in perfect weather. I could feel that I was running strong and steady. Instead of thinking I needed to walk, I actually felt pretty jazzed by the building momentum. I hit my rhythm and stayed there pretty consistently after 3K.

My younger faster colleague, Miranda, turned out also to be doing the 10K, and it was great to see her a few times and also at the end with her partner (also a colleague) and one of their kids. I got cheered on by a few other runners who know me through the blog and the book but whom I don’t know in person. At about 7K, one woman running towards me said she read and loved the book and that I was her hero! That almost made me cry but then I knew crying would slow me down so instead I let her beautiful comment motivate me (“you’re someone’s hero! Act like it! Go faster!”). Thank you to the lovely soul who said that to me.

When I hit the final turnaround and realized I only had 2.5K to go, which, come on, is hardly anything, I felt so good. I made a final decision that when I got to about 1K to go I would turn off the music and give it my absolute all. And I did just that.

When I crossed the finish line I hit “stop” on the Garmin. True to my word, I hadn’t looked at it since the race started. It read 1:04:31, not far off my chip time of 1:04:25. I was amazed. Seriously.

Now it’s true that had the conditions been different — a more humid day, a hillier course, less support from others, maybe even an on-time start — it wouldn’t have been the same. But whatever. I did it. I broke 1:05 and shaved almost 1:30 off of my previous personal record, set way back in 2014 at the Halloween Haunting when I was in top condition after my fittest by 50 triathlon season.

Between breaking my 10K record and consistently doing 3 sets of 12 pull-ups at the weight training studio, I’m feeling pretty amazed at the evolution of my athleticism. Confident and strong. Yes, I realize that 1:04:25 is not an epic time for some people. Lots of folks come in under 60 minutes for their 10K, some even under 45 minutes, closer to 30. Wow! I am truly in awe of those sorts of times. But I am also in awe of progress and personal milestones, and I think it’s okay to be impressed with ourselves sometimes!

That feeling will carry me to my next goal, which is to take the continuous running to a new distance–the half marathon. That will be a new challenge, but I think I can do it if I run smart at the Scotiabank Waterfront Half Marathon in October. I have the time goal of 2:25 in the back of my head. I will follow that pace bunny. But my main objective is to run continuous. Again with no Garmin. Between now and then I will stay consistent with the training that Linda has laid out for me.

Sam and I sometimes laugh about how boring our message is. No dramatic magical transformation that happens overnight. Just a moderate, easy going approach. Start small, put in consistent effort, challenge ourselves a bit, and see what happens. It really does yield amazing results, even if they kind of creep up on us.

Have you amazed yourself lately? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

A white and turquoise mountain bike leaning against a tree. A turquoise helmet hangs on the handlebars. Race Report: Cyclocross (Guest Post)
competition · cycling · fitness · Guest Post · race report · racing

Race Report: Cyclocross (Guest Post)

Chloe W

This past weekend, I did my first ever bike race. This was sort of a big deal for me for a couple of reasons: the first one was that I was trying cyclocross, which was a totally unfamiliar race type for me. The second reason was that I was hit by a car while cycling to work a few months ago, and although the crash was nowhere near as bad as it could have been, it was still significant enough to have me out of commission for a few months. In addition to disrupting my PhD work and a lot of other parts of my life, the crash left me unable to cycle for a while, and unwilling to cycle for a while longer. It’s only been in the last couple of weeks that I’ve gotten back to commuting by bike.

A white and turquoise mountain bike leaning against a tree. A turquoise helmet hangs on the handlebars.
My mountain bike and partner in crime. Image description: A white and turquoise mountain bike leaning against a tree. A turquoise helmet hangs on the handlebars.

Wikipedia gives a better description of what a cyclocross race is than I can, so I’m going to steal it here.

Cyclocross (sometimes cyclo-cross, CX, cyclo-X or ‘cross) is a form of bicycle racing. Races typically take place in the autumn and winter (the international or “World Cup” season is October–February), and consist of many laps of a short (2.5–3.5 km or 1.5–2 mile) course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and remount.

–Wikipedia, “Cyclo-cross”

At the end of last season (I’m in Aotearoa New Zealand, so it’s winter for us right now and therefore cyclocross season), I promised a friend that I’d try a cyclocross race next season. This race was the second last of the season, so I decided to do it because I was running out of chances to keep my promise! To be honest, I didn’t really want to try it, but I do take my promises quite seriously, even when they’re about pretty low-stakes things. And the weather was perfect, to boot. So I loaded up my bike, grabbed my jersey and snazzy pink mountain biking shorts, and off I went!

A 27-year-old woman wearing a grey shirt and pink shorts, sitting on her bike on a dirt track, smiling at the camera.
Ready to go, just before the start of the race! Image description: A 27-year-old woman wearing a grey shirt and pink shorts, sitting on her bike on a dirt track, smiling at the camera.

In cyclocross races, you have a set time to complete as many laps as possible. For this race, we had fifty minutes. I don’t know exactly how long the course was, but there were several different kinds of terrain: packed dirt, mud, sand, grass, trail, pavement, and gravel. I completed five laps of the course, which I’m pretty happy with. The leaders completed ten! I came in basically dead last. I’m confident, although not certain, that the only riders behind me on the results list were people who dropped out due to mechanical failures.

I’m of two minds with the results. On the one hand, the main reason I went was because I wanted to fulfil my promise to my friend. I also wanted to go try something new, have a laugh, get a bit muddy, and burn up some energy. I’m proud of myself for not quitting, even though I had the opportunity to do so with every completed lap, and I’m proud that I actually got faster with each lap. That showed that I was getting a better handle on the course, I think, and getting into the groove for how it was supposed to work. So, I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do.

On the other hand, I felt a bit confused for a lot of it – I wasn’t always sure how to deal with faster people passing me, in that I didn’t know the etiquette, and I basically just tried to stay to the side as much as possible. But there were several bottlenecks in the course and inevitably, people who were significantly faster than me would get stuck behind me, unable to pass until the course opened up again. I felt bad about that, and worried that I was ruining someone else’s race, even though I was trying to do whatever I could to mitigate the problem. A friend, who is an experienced cyclocross racer, reassured me that the fastest people on the course are used to having to pass slower people, and that dealing with those bottlenecks is part of how cyclocross works. That made me feel a bit better, but I still worry that I got in front of the wrong person at a crucial moment in their race!

I wish I could sit here and say, “Yeah, that was super fun!” I can’t. It wasn’t that fun. I don’t really want to do it again. I probably will, because there’s one more race this season, and a friend who does these races will be in town for the next one. So, we’ll probably do it together, but I think that will be it for me. And yet, a friend who came to spectate told me that she and the spectators around her kept commenting on the fact that I had a huge smile the whole time! It’s odd – it didn’t feel fun. But I guess some part of me liked it nonetheless!

A 27-year-old woman wearing a grey shirt and pink shorts riding a bike on pavement.
Me completing a lap during the race. Image description: A 27-year-old woman wearing a grey shirt and pink shorts riding a bike on pavement.

fitness · race report · racing · running · training · traveling

A beautiful day for the Guelph Lake 10K (group report)

Tracy I3 Comments

Image description: Left to right Violetta (black cap, red t-shirt, fine chain with pendant), Ellen (blond hair tied back, bangs, white tank), and Tracy (blue cap and sunglasses, purple and pink tank), all smiling.
Image description: Left to right Violetta (black cap, red t-shirt, fine chain with pendant), Ellen (blond hair tied back, bangs, white tank), and Tracy (blue cap and sunglasses, purple and pink tank), all smiling.

As I reported last week, I’ve been prepping for the Guelph Lake 10K and I recruited Violetta and Ellen to do it with me. It was a gorgeous day for a Sunday run, not too hot, sunny with a bit of cloud cover, a light breeze that felt just right at least some of the time.

As I like to do when there’s a group of us doing an event, I asked Ellen and Violetta to write a bit about their experience. We were all in different places with the 10K. I had been prepping. Just a few weeks before, Ellen had never run that distance before. And Violetta has been sporadic in her training and didn’t feel she had time to prep as she would have liked.

Ellen

So today I did my first 10 k in my life! At 54! Actually, it was my first running race of any sort! No 3Ks, or 5Ks to start out with ….But then again, I have always been the kind of person to “go big or go home” in all areas of life. This has got me into some troubles in the past, such as excessive smoking and imbibing for many years, but I digress.  For the past 6 and a half years or so, I have tried to confine this mentality to more healthy pursuits ☺.

I really didn’t know if I could do it.  I have been running for a little while and not tracking any distances, but then one day about a month ago, I actually tracked myself doing 8.5K, and my friend Tracy, said no problem, you can do it!

My high school memories are filled with shame of being the last pick for teams, and being next to the end when it came to any sort of running.  But, I am a grown up now, and I have met many other personal challenges, so I summed up my courage and tried it out today.

What a feeling of accomplishment! And what fun to share the love of this sport with other like-minded folks!  I am grateful to Tracy for encouraging me to overcome the fear and just go out and do my best.

Who knows… maybe a half marathon is now in sight. I never thought I would say that! So, to all the readers out there, I am at my fittest ever at 54…And sky is the limit! I challenge you all to go after your fitness dreams and be your best ever, at any age.

Violetta

I’ve really let my running slide over the cold, cold winter.  So when Tracy let me know about the Guelph Lake 10k, I thought it would be the perfect thing to get me back into running regularly.  It didn’t quite work out that way because I wasn’t feeling very well the last couple of weeks.  Since I couldn’t prepare physically, I spent a lot of time trying to work on the psychological aspect, telling myself that I can do this and re-reading Tracy’s blog posts about running without prep and quickly regaining confidence.

I’m not going to lie.  I was certainly questioning myself.  Could I do this?  Was I risking injury given my lack of training?  Well, I did it! I now know, for myself, that it is possible to complete a 10k without much prep, not much at all.  I haven’t run more than 5k in many, many months.  I’m not saying it’s advisable or even preferable.  And it certainly wasn’t easy. But I was very lucky—the weather was perfect, the atmosphere was casual and laid back and I was running with a friend I don’t get a chance to spend much time with.

I will say I didn’t love the repeated rolling hills (well, I didn’t mind going down them) or the repeated loop.  In the end, the race served the function I needed it to, to get back into running, to remind me how much I love it.  It’s too easy to lose your rhythm and get out of good habits.  This was my first step back.

Thanks Tracy for inviting me to come along and for encouraging me when things got difficult.  And what a treat it was to have Sam cheering us on!  I’ve taken my first step and now I’m planning my next ones.  Maybe another 10k … maybe another half?  I’ll let you know.

Tracy

The race has that local event feel that you get in the smaller cities and towns. I enjoy traveling for events because you get a change of scenery and a slightly different vibe wherever you go.  This one was at Guelph Lake Conservation Area, with the course taking us along the lake for awhile, then through the camp ground, and park. It’s not a bad course but any race that involves two loops is always a bit psychologically tough (in my view). There could also have been more water.

I ran with Violetta, and we had committed to keep each other moving forward. She was worried she wouldn’t make it the full distance (I knew she could) and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make it without a walk break (I wasn’t so sure). Ellen didn’t want to run with us because, according to her, she’s really slow. She of course came in 26 seconds earlier than we did.

My main goal for this one was to do a continuous 10K, no walk breaks. I did it! Other than a very brief walk through an aid station where I was so thirsty I had to drink a cup of water properly, not letting it fly out of the cup while running, I kept a steady pace throughout the race, averaging 7:00/K for a 1:10:01 finish. That’s slower than my 10K without prep! But I think part of the reason for that is that Violetta and I spent quite a bit of the first 8K chatting, and I can’t push quite as hard when I’m chatting. (not that it wasn’t nice to catch up!)

I would have liked to come in under 1:10. But one second over is alright with me. Linda told me recently that I am not aware of my athletic potential. This may be true — I still feel a rush of skepticism when I think about getting measurably faster. Like I’ll always hover around the same speed no matter what I do. But that is a topic for another post. I mention it now because the doubt sets in most acutely on race days.

Image description: Tracy and Violetta running side by side, smiling, trees in the background.
Image description: Tracy and Violetta running side by side, smiling, trees in the background.

But the day had many bonuses: Besides getting to do something with Violetta and Ellen, Sarah and Sam rode their bikes to the park to cheer us on and take great action shots!  And then, when all was said and done, we went out for a fancy brunch at a lovely shaded patio in Guelph.

It was a great time with friends and it’s got me now thinking of my next goal — 10K continuous AND shave some minutes off of my time. I’m working with Linda again and I’m feeling revved up and ready to go.

 

Here are the three of us at the finish line, after re-hydrating:

Image description: Full body shot of Tracy (tank top, shorts, cap and sunglasses, bib 219), Violetta (t-shirt, capris, cap, bib 216), and Ellen (tank and shorts, bib 189), standing on grass, trees and people in background.
Image description: Full body shot of Tracy (tank top, shorts, cap and sunglasses, bib 219), Violetta (t-shirt, capris, cap, bib 216), and Ellen (tank and shorts, bib 189), standing on grass, trees and people in background.

athletes · competition · fitness · Guest Post · race report · racing · running

Grapes of Wrath – What did I do?!? (Guest Post)

cdaigle3 Comments

Sunday was the Grapes of Wrath Niagara 2018 5K mud and obstacle run raising funds for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Wheels of Hope. I have posted before on my participation in the Merchant Ale House run club (here and here). We go out every Sunday morning and have been signing up for cool races. One Sunday the group talked about it as I was busy with someone and then when I came back they said: “Christine, we are doing this!” “Ok,” I said, “I will sign up!” And so I did, without realizing what I was getting into.

This may have been the toughest thing I ever did. We were a team of 8, 3 men and 5 women, of various ages and abilities. The point of the event is not to win but to “finish together.” Honestly, I do not know how I could have finished by myself. The first serious obstacle required hanging from a rope, quite a few feet up in the air, and crossing a certain distance (don’t ask, I don’t know, all I know is it was long) pulling yourself with your arms and legs to cross. I think I may have gone halfway only before I fell in the hay below. But I gave it my all to get as far as I could.

Giving it your all: that is what this run required and I tried my best to give it. Some obstacles were just plain fun (water slide landing in a pool of mud) and climbing over wood structures. Others, were unpleasant: crawling through mud under a tarp or crossing a pool of icy water with blocks of ice floating in it! The toughest one by far was the last: climb and cross a wall helping yourself with a rope, cross a massive puddle of mud and jump over 3 logs while holding for dear life on a rope (it felt like sinking in quick sand) and then climb the last mud hill. You can see us in the background climbing the mud hill in the picture below. The other two pictures are in the “before and after” spirit.

I barely made it up that mud hill. I slid two thirds of the way and held on to the rope and was trying to pry myself up under the cheers of my team and thought “this is it, can’t do it. I can’t!” But then I did. I managed to crawl with friends cheering and then grabbing me and pulling me up. I cried from exhaustion.

I was pulled, pushed, lifted, both physically and mentally through this run with friends. What an adventure. To say we were dirty is an understatement, as you can tell from the pictures. After two showers and a bath I still felt like I smelled of manure. We were all exhausted but proud and happy we did it and finished together!

Now I am told we are doing this again! I will have to work on my upper body strength for next year to help myself and others. I read about Tracy’s chin-ups and pull-ups the other day. Guess what I will be starting to do this week?

fitness · Guest Post · race report · racing · running

So how’d it go? Putting a race into perspective (Guest post)

jaquaid

Image description: Head shot of Jennifer smiling, wearing a visor, pre-race, trees, people, building, flag and white sky in background.
Image description: Head shot of Jennifer smiling, wearing a visor, pre-race, trees, people, building, flag and white sky in background.

by Jennifer Quaid

I ran the Ottawa Race Weekend Scotiabank Half-Marathon last Sunday.  And as happens to countless other athletes in the minutes, hours and days following a race, game or competition, I was asked: “How’d it go?”

“How’d it go?” such a simple little question on the surface and, assuming the question is well-intentioned (not always the case, but we’ll leave that for another blog), something asked out of genuine interest in the participant’s assessment of what happened during the event. The answer, however, is tricky because whether you like it or not, you have to reflect on what your performance means to you (in relation to one or more indicators, be it an objective metric like time, score or ranking or a subjective perception, like effort, satisfaction or fun) and then, you have to decide what you are going to say about it to others.  Sometimes, these two steps flow smoothly from one to the other – usually when you meet or exceed whatever expectations you had.  Other times there is no clear answer because it depends on how you want to characterize what happened. Glass half-empty or glass half-full?  This latest half-marathon was just such a situation.  Through the prism of three possible answers to the question, here is how I worked through what I thought of my race and what I would say about it.

Answer number 1: “I ran a 1:44.21.”  Answering with a race time is a typical, quick response.  I thought about just saying this multiple times. Before the race, I had indicated to some of my running friends that I hoped to run a sub-1:45.  For anyone who does a sport that is measured against the clock, you know there are thresholds imbued with a certain aura.  A sub-1:45 half-marathon is one of them, because it translates into a sub-5:00 min/km pace, a kind of badge of honour among older racers like me (I’m 48) who still remember when they could run really fast without nearly as much effort.

In the world of amateur running, competition is a relative concept. I do not try to compete with elite runners or even category winners. Even in my 45-49 category, the fastest women run times that are beyond my reach.  My objectives are calibrated to what I think I can achieve – on a good day, when things go well, taking into account the reality that running is an activity I love but which can command only a limited amount of my time in comparison to that which is taken up by my family, my friends, my colleagues and students, my academic career, my community etc.

Against this backdrop, it would be tempting to say, just be happy you can run, just go out there and have fun, who cares about the time?  Well, umm, I do.  I have been racing in some form or another my entire life: cross-country, middle distance track, 5 & 10k road races, marathons, triathlons, Masters swim meets and open-water swims.  As I have joked to many people over the years: you can take an athlete out of competition, but you cannot take competition out of an athlete. Age, injuries, family and work responsibilities, none of that can ever dim the desire to perform and to achieve goals.  Of course, this applies to other areas of life too, but sport remains a particularly fertile ground for setting measurable targets.  But a time never tells the whole story and this was especially true for my half-marathon this year.

Answer number 2: “It went really well until about 16k, when I got a massive calf cramp. I kept going but the cramp never went away completely. I finished ok, but not as well as I could have.”

The bane of the older athlete’s existence is the way the body can break down in ways it never has before. Sometimes, we see it coming, sometimes it hits without warning.  Going into Sunday’s race, I was worried about lingering issues with my hamstrings, which have become quite vulnerable (running plus a desk job is terrible for hamstrings).

In 2015, my first half-marathon after more than 10 years (and 3 kids) away from road racing, I ran a personal best time of 1:39.53, but I paid for it dearly when in the weeks following the race I started to notice sharp pain in my left hamstring when I ran at faster tempos. I foolishly did not heed these early warning signs and ended up with a hamstring tear (there was never a precise cause identified and it took months to diagnose, but I knew something was not right by the fall of 2015).  It took 18 months to recover, during which I could do little running and it nearly drove me crazy! I ran the 2017 half-marathon but I was much more careful and much slower (1:46.32).

In preparing for this year’s race, my left hamstring was fine, but my right hamstring had occasionally bothered me in training.  When I woke up on race day, however, I felt great.  It was a cool overcast morning and I could sense in my bones that the conditions for racing would be near perfect – the times were going to be fast this year.  Nevertheless, I started the race cautiously, watching my pacing, making sure I was not going out too fast.  At about 15k, I looked down at my watch: a 4:51 km/min, not lightning speed, but a good solid pace. I said to myself: “No need to push, your first half of the race was strong, all you need to do is stick on this pace and you’re golden.” Hubris, I suppose.  500 m later, my calf seized up in a cramp so intense I had to stop running.  More than the pain, I felt the utter shock of surprise: how can this be? I have never had a calf cramp in my life!  In an instant, I knew my fast time was history.

But the injury, though significant, was still only part of the story.

Answer number 3: “I had so much fun out there: the atmosphere was amazing.  I just love being part of this race!”

If you have ever run in a mass race, you will know that while running in the crowd of runners, you are part of something larger than yourself. Even if people are actually running at variable speeds, you are part of a continuous flow that carries you along, if not physically, at least psychologically.  Until you stop.

When I had my calf cramp, I was stopped for all of about 20-30 seconds as I tried to stretch it out.  Nevertheless, I watched what seemed like thousands of runners whizz past me. I will admit it was dispiriting. Then I had another surprise.  A runner stopped at my side for a few moments. He said: “You ok?  Try rolling your foot more to take the pressure off the calf. And here, take this.  Good luck!”  He handed me a packaged electrolyte “gummy bar” and was gone.  I did not have time to note his name or bib number.  But I will forever be grateful to him for altering the course of the race for me.  Not for the calf muscle – even the gummy bar could not eliminate the pain and awkward gait I would have to manage for the next 5 km – but for the change in attitude his gesture prompted in me.

Though I do a lot of sports, I will always be first and foremost a runner.  Running is one of the few spaces in my busy life that remains completely mine and allows me to reconnect with that fleet-footed 10 year-old I once was, who ran out of pure joy without a care in the world.  Now, she said to me : “Hey, this cramp may slow you down, but you don’t have to let it ruin your fun.”  So I started up again, resolved to enjoy every single minute. I smiled at every funny sign I saw (my favourite: “Enjoy this quiet time away from the kids!”), I clapped in appreciation at the bands playing on the roadside, I high-fived every kid who held out his or her hand, and I blew kisses to the throngs of spectators who lined the final kilometres of the course. Most important, I did not once look at my watch.  When I crossed the line at 1:44.50 (gun time, not chip time), I was pleasantly surprised.

Image description: Headshot of Jennifer, post-race, smiling, sunglasses on head, trees and park benches in background.
Image description: Headshot of Jennifer, post-race, smiling, sunglasses on head, trees and park benches in background.

Three answers, all factually accurate, all different perspectives on the same race. So what’s the takeaway?  Each of them is an important part of why I continue to race.

First, performance metrics, like time, when kept in reasonable bounds, give me something to strive for and provide a focus for training.  I may not have had my best time this year, but I was encouraged and pleased with the first 2/3 of the race.  At the finish line, my first thought was : I am not done; there is room for improvement yet.  I can run faster!

Second, injuries happen, especially as we age.  The calf strain was a reminder not to take the body for granted, but I was also heartened by how well my hamstrings have held up.  I realized that with proper care and training, it is possible to rebuild and recover.

Finally, attitude is everything.  Clearly, finishing the half-marathon with a smile is small potatoes in comparison with other more important matters.  But it was a reminder to me of the transformative power of choosing to be positive in the face of adversity.

So how’d it go? “It was fast, it was tough and it was fun! And I can’t wait till next year!”

Bio: An avid runner and swimmer who also enjoys cycling, cross-country skiing, and yoga, Jennifer is a married mother of three and a professor in the Civil Law Section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa.

athletes · Guest Post · race report · running

Lessons learned from a first half marathon (Guest post)

Sam B10 Comments

Sunday morning, after five months of training. I ran the Ottawa Half Marathon, my very first timed race, ever. I had a fantastic time. Here are some things I learned during the race itself.

Cheering really does help. There were spectators nearly the whole route, in crowds in some places, or just standing on corners by themselves, cheering. Posters (“This looks like a lot of work for a free banana”), noise-makers, boom-boxes, families, cheer teams, and even children holding hoses and spraying runners who asked for it. It was noisy and cheerful and overwhelmingly supportive. I must have high-fived a hundred little kids and it felt great. It’s true that cheering made me run faster, hurt less, smile more. I thought it would be weird and that I would be really self-conscious. But it was awesome and I felt like a hero. I even mugged for the race photographers, at kilometer 17, which tells you how much fun I was having.

Looking silly

Go through the mister but maybe pass on the electrolytes. I know I tend to overheat, and undersweat. I hit every mister I could. I also poured water over my hair, grabbing cups at every station, and I poured them over my back, too. I grabbed an orange at kilometer 11. I grabbed a sponge at kilometre 14 and doused myself thoroughly again. Honestly, it made me feel like a superhero of running to grab water from outstretched hands at the aid stations. And it’s really fun to run through all the dropped paper cups, like runner confetti. Crunchy and happy and chaotic. I felt like a badass. I did not try any electrolyte drink (hadn’t trained with it) nor any of the energy bites offered (again, hadn’t trained with it)—I didn’t want to risk any tummy upsets. I feel like I got full use of the aid stations (soaking myself) but didn’t throw my plan out the window (new food and drink).

10-and-1s are some kind of miracle. I was initially skeptical about training for an endurance race but taking, like, 13 one-minute walk breaks along the way. It seemed to kind of miss the point. And yet: I pulled a 6:44 pace overall with the walk breaks which is faster than I could run a continuous 10k in the fall before I broke my foot. Somehow the walk breaks (and I walked FAST) gave me enough of a mental break that it was very easy to run all of my longer intervals between 6:15-6:30, which, again, is not a pace I used to be able to sustain at all. Another unexpected benefit of the 10-and-1s is that everyone passes you while you’re walking, so you cease very quickly to be precious about it. You’ll just catch ‘em later.

Trust the training. My run club program had 90 runs in the training schedule. I did 88 of them. My coaches said that 2:20 was and eminently doable half marathon goal for me. Naturally, I didn’t believe them. So I started the race following the 2:30 pace bunny. After about 1km, though, that just felt way too slow, and so I basically sped up the whole rest of the race and wound up finishing in 2:21:44. So my coaches were right, after all, even if I didn’t trust them. Next time I will trust the training.

Some of it is hard, but then that passes. There was a chunk of time around kilometre 14 where I was questioning my pace, my preparation, my endurance, and my motivation. (There was a gentle hill involved.) I slowed down a wee bit for about a minute, and the feeling passed. There was a bigger chunk of time around kilometre 19, where I could see the finish line … on the other side of the canal, and then I had to run past it, and had to keep running away from it for like another 750m before finally crossing the canal and doubling back. I suddenly became overwhelmed with the idea I couldn’t do it any more. I slowed down for about 30 seconds, and then told myself that I had done tempo runs faster and longer than what I had left. By the time I passed the 20km marker, I forgot that I didn’t think I was going to finish, and I sped up even more. It surprised me that I could feel weak, or tired, or scared, and that if I just kept going for even another minute, the feeling would just … dissipate. And that I could be even stronger after.

Live your dreams of athletic glory. I placed in the bottom 40% no matter which way you slice the results. I am literally, statistically, well below average among finishers overall, in my age group, and in my gender. Nevertheless, I ended my race feeling like a gold-medal Olympian because a) I started in the right corral, and b) I started at the very back of my corral. Since I was reasonably conservative about where I lined up at the start line, and since I ran fast enough to almost have run one corral faster, I actually spent most of the race … passing people. I’m not going to lie: that was really great. I never pass anyone, like ever, in real life. I even found the energy for a kick right at the finish. Look at the photo: it seems like many others are happily ambling in, but I’m in full sprint mode, hilariously.

Looking super serious

I started all this nervous about the distance, the training, the race, whether I was a “real athlete” and whether I would just somehow fail at the last moment. But it turned out great, better than I could have hoped. I’m glad I didn’t let all my fears stop me from trying. So I finished my first half marathon, and it for sure is not going to be my last.

Aimée Morrison is on sabbatical from professoring in new media studies in 2018 and trying to achieve some healthy ratio of words-written to miles-run.

competition · fitness · race report · running

Bettina’s sunny 10k race report

bettinathenomad9 Comments

Last weekend, I ran a 10k race. It was only my third ever ‘proper’ race, so these things are still sort of new and exciting to me. A key difference was also that I ran this race with a group of colleagues. To be fair, I started my first 10k running with a friend, but I knew he was going to be way faster than me so I wasn’t surprised when he took off after the first kilometre and the rest was very much a ‘me-vs-the-road’ thing. Last week’s race definitely felt like we were doing it as a group.

I had specifically picked this race because it was a flat course. I do very, very poorly on hills and it’s something I want to work on. So if anyone has any tips on how to improve running uphill, send them my way. I really need them. I also had a goal: I wanted to do it in under 60 minutes.

StLeonRot10k
Bettina post-race, complete with post-race hair.

The day of the race was a beautiful sunny Sunday and threatened to actually get quite hot. That thing about the hottest spring in the history of weather recording? Definitely true for this part of the world. It felt more like July than early May. Luckily the race was in the morning and substantial parts of it were in the shade. Still, when the 5k water station came around I was very grateful.

I started off sticking to a colleague with whom I’d run in the past and whom I knew to be more or less at the same pace as myself. Well… it turned out that apparently she’d been getting in a bit more training than me  and  set off faster than anticipated. Nevertheless, I tried to hang on to her as long as I could, because if anything, I’m competitive. But about three kilometres into the race I knew I had to let it, and my colleague, go.

But given that I was doing well for speed, I decided to try and stay at roughly a 5:30km/h pace, which is still faster than I normally run. At this point, I wanted to see if I could do it. And I almost could! In the end, I averaged 5:34, which is really good for me and I was very pleased with my final time of 56:46. I would have been even more pleased had I been able to do it in 55. So that’s my goal for next time.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable race in a small town with a very community feel, organised by the local sports club. The atmosphere was really relaxed, and while some of our team mentioned that it would have been nice to have more people cheering us on along the course, I actually didn’t mind the calmness of our run through fields and forest.

I’m not going to lie, parts of it were a struggle. It was quite hot out in the fields, so that was a factor. Also, when I had to acknowledge that my colleague was actually too fast for me, while a few months ago she was definitely slower, I couldn’t help but feel a bit frustrated with myself. But I’m trying to push past that and focus on the fact that I ran an awesome time by my own standard. All in all, I had a great time. We went for a nice lunch with some of the team members afterwards and it was a lot of fun. I hope we run again soon!