It’s been almost a week, and memory is fading fast, so I thought I would jot down a few thoughts from the Toronto Waterfront Marathon that I ran last Sunday.

The good: I finished with a personal record time.

The bad: I missed my goal time, and was also still over four hours.

Sunday, October 16th was the date, and Toronto was the place.  Eighteen weeks of training, and nearly 1000 miles of running culminated in one huge event.  The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, Half Marathon, and 5K was host to 22,000 runners.  By far the biggest running event I’ve ever been a part of.  The weather was cool, but not cold, about 12C.  The wind, though, was 40 km/h, gusting to 60 km/h, from the west.  I knew this was going to be a problem, because it’s an east-west course, so about half of the run was into the wind, and that included the final 7 km.

The start was nerve-wracking.  I did all the things I need to do to get to my comfort zone, but the number of people was still amazing.  The start corrals were a joke.  I was mixed in with all the other colours, and it made for a very slow start.  On the other hand, physically, I felt great.  Really.  I had been having problems with shin splints for about four weeks leading up to the marathon, and I had absolutely no trouble at all for the entire duration of the run.  In fact, my shins were the only parts of my legs that weren’t sore by the end.

The first 5 km went by, and slowly the pace came up as the crowd thinned.  Heading out on Lake Shore, I was still awed by the number of runners.  About 9 km in, I saw the leaders heading back from the first out-and-back.  That was really cool.  Then, on my way back, I saw the 100-year-old Fauja Singh, who would later go on to become the oldest runner to complete a marathon, with a time just over eight hours.  

During this part, my pace was too fast.  I think the wind at my back may have boosted me, and mentally, I felt like I had time to make up after the slow start.  This was a mistake.  Around 20 km, as we went out on the lake, and the wind became a factor, I was starting to feel tired.  My feet were sore; the left one had tendon pain where my laces were tied, and the right was getting a blister.  Neither of these things had been problems since I got new shoes a month before.  I pressed on.  

Water stations were plentiful, and I had lots of water.  Perhaps too much even.  Anyways, I didn’t feel thirsty at all.  Around 30 km, I was really feeling it, and time was starting to slow down.  I knew I was in for trouble, because I still had 5 km till the turnaround, and then 7 km right into the wind.  I started slowing my pace to conserve energy.  There were a couple of hills, which I’m sure were no big deal, but seemed like mountains at that point.  My hamstrings and calves certainly told me so.  

At 35 km, we turned around, right into the wind, and sure enough, things weren’t feeling good.  At this point, I actually caught sight of the 3:45 pace bunny, which was my target pace, but I could see there was no chance of me catching him, and certainly no chance of keeping his pace for the remainder.  I kept dropping my pace at this point.  I was slower than 6:00/km by now, and heading towards 6:20.  For comparison, my first 20 km were around 5:15-5:20/km.

At this point, I didn’t even want GU anymore, and I started taking Gatorade at the aid stations.  I wasn’t hungry, and I wasn’t thirsty, but things just weren’t working out.  Somehow, I kept going.  I told myself that if I stopped running, I wouldn’t make it to the finish.  

I kept pushing and pushing, but at 39 km I just couldn’t win the mental battle anymore.  Unfamiliarity with the territory didn’t help.  I could see the Scotiabank tower, where the finish was, but it seemed a lot farther than 3 km away.  I convinced myself that there was no way to get there.  Throughout the run, there was lots of spectator support, and they really inspired me, but I had to walk at this point.  I alternated running and walking for the next 2.5 km, but I ran that last 700 m down Wellington and Bay Streets.  A slow run, but a run nonetheless.  The finish was awesome, although a hard right turn 100 m from the end wasn’t very nice, and my hamstrings were so tight coming into the finish that I was basically limping over the line.  

I made it.  Chip time was 4:00:36.  Thirty-six seconds was all that separated me from a sub-four-hour finish.  But it was still a PR, so I’ll take it.

Nearly a week later, the pain has faded, and it seems that I avoided any permanent harm, so I’m looking forward to when I can do it again.  Next time, I’ll try to be a bit more disciplined, and hope for less wind.  It’s going to be a long winter.

I knew going into this one that it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.  I’ve never run the course and I wasn’t familiar with the trails, but when the top of my class finished 8 km in over 40 minutes last year, I knew I was going to get into trouble.

I started out strong, and completely ignorant.  My first two splits were 4:19 and 4:22.  I was aiming for about 4:30, so that was great.  Then I found out that there were hills.  Oh, and even though it was a trail run, over half of the trail was exposed, and did I mention it was hot and sunny today?  Finally, I made it to the woods, but even though it was shady, there were still hills.  And three river crossings which were nearly knee-deep.  One of the banks was so steep that they had a couple of strong young men to help pull the runners up.  Then, just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, there is this monstrously steep hill, and just for fun there is a sprinkler running at the top, so it’s a muddy mess.  Somehow I got through all of that… and that was just 4 km.  We did it all again, but much slower the second time around.  I actually walked up the final hill, which turned out to be a good call, because I could barely get my footing at a walking pace.

Oh, yeah, there was a mud pit at the end, about 25 m long, but it was almost anticlimactic by that point.  I had survived.  My time?  Not anywhere near the 36 minutes I think I could run an 8 km road course in.  But still good enough for third in my class: 42:16.  I’ll take it.

I never thought I would lose a toenail running.  I have lost four in the last year.  I thought it would hurt, but it doesn’t.  Saturday, I was sitting on the floor and felt something funny and that’s when I realized that another one had fallen off.  I had been expecting it for weeks, but it was still a bit of a surprise. 

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day for running.  The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the temperature was somewhere between 15-20C.  The lake had that beautiful summer shimmer, and winds were light.

One of my goals for this year is to get my 10K time down to 45 minutes.  I’m not expecting to get there yet, especially since I’m still only five weeks removed from my first Marathon.  I have about two weeks of running at a faster pace under my belt, which isn’t enough conditioning to run 10K at the 4:30/km pace I would need to run. 

I felt that if I ran hard, I could average a 4:45/km pace and finish in 47:30.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to run a flat pace, negative split, or just go out hard and see what happened.  As the race began, I just ran hard and hoped for the best.  I ran the first 3.5 km at a pace around 4:30/km, but I was getting really hot and my heart rate was climbing too high. I decided that there was no way I was going to finish 10 km at that pace, so I found someone to run with and aimed for something closer to 5:00/km.  I ran the next 5.5 km or so at that pace, and then tried to finish the last km a bit faster.  

Overall, I call the race a success.  I finished in a time of 47:20, which is 10 seconds faster than my goal.  More important, that’s about 90 seconds faster than my previous best.  If it was a few degrees cooler, or if there were more wooded areas, I probably could have run faster.  The same organizers are putting on a 5 km evening race next month, and I’m thinking about signing up.

It has now been four days since I ran the Waterloo Marathon, and I think I’d better write down some thoughts before the entire thing fades from my memory.  

Before the run, I was feeling confident and a bit scared.  Scared because I had never run this distance before.  Confident because I had put in the time and the miles and I knew that I was ready.  I was actually less nervous for this one than I was for the 30K in Hamilton at the end of March.

The weather forecast looked good.  Yes, cloudy, but light wind and 10C, with 0% chance of rain.  So I dodged a bullet there (more on this later).  With that in mind, I decided to wear shorts and go sleeveless.

Denise and I drove over to Bechtel Park about 20 minutes before the start.  Since we live five minutes from the park, we pretty much waited until the last minute.  At the start line, I began to have doubts about my clothing, but I knew I would warm up.

As the race began, I tried to keep to my 6:00/km pace, but I was feeling good, and I ran faster.  I felt comfortable at 5:30/km, and I didn’t have any soreness.  Basically, I figured that my taper did its job and I had recovered nicely.  I also knew that 5:30 was my theoretical race pace, which was enough mental ammunition to make me keep it up.  As we went into the country, everything was feeling great.  

The marathon course splits from the half marathon between Bloomingdale and Conestogo, about 9 km into the run.  On that road, there are lots of trees and not much traffic.  The terrain beside the roads looked pretty marshy.  As we got to about 13 km, I felt a couple of drops of rain.  Uh-oh.  So much for 0% chance of precipitation.  Also, I was starting to think I should have stopped at the portable toilet at 10 km.  My pace was still comfortable at around 5:30/km.

At 16 km, we turned onto Maryhill Road.  There was also a toilet at the turn, which I was happy about.  It was even available when I got there!  After a pit stop, I picked up my pace to catch up with the pack I had been running with.  My peak pace was 3:56/km, and this was the fastest I moved in the entire race.  Once I caught up, I slowed down to my 5:30 pace again.

Things went pretty well from there.  The road turned from asphalt to gravel, which was actually kind of nice.  The impact from the gravel is nicer on my joints.  The rain wasn’t really coming down yet, and the wind was light.  The temperature was pleasantly cool.  I was a bit disappointed when we came to the end of the road; I thought we were going to make a left turn towards the city, but we went right instead.  I remember this water station; I was heating up enough that I poured about half the cup over my head.  It wasn’t raining yet.

I remember when we reached the next turn, one of the cyclists that was tracking the course was, I think, trying to motivate us by saying “Run”.  I responded with something like “That sounds like a good idea.”  Duh.  We went down to Rivers Edge Drive, and finally made the left turn I was waiting for.  We passed some nice old houses and came to the West Montrose bridge.  This is one of the few covered bridges around, and it is the landmark for this race.  Mileage check: about 25 km.  I think this is about when it started raining for real.  We ran through West Montrose and up to Road 86, and across to Northfield Drive. 

The last 14 km were hilly, rainy, and windy.  And my pace slowed to match.  At this point, I was starting to realize just how long the race was.  I had already been running for 28 km and I still had 14 km to go.  I tried to break the race down into pieces.  I knew that I had 6 km to Conestogo, then about 3 km till I was back in the city, and 5 km from there to the finish.  I just had to keep motivated.  I also thought a lot about having a bath and lying down on the couch when I got home. At this point, another cyclist came up behind me and I think I jumped two feet into the air.  Yes, I had tunnel vision at this point.

It was raining pretty steadily by the time we reached Conestogo.  I can remember making some kind of remark about how it was nice that we weren’t supposed to have rain or something.  My pace had dropped to about 5:45/km by this point.  

The rain got worse and worse and the wind got harder as we went up and down the rolling hills towards Waterloo.  I knew if I could make it to University Avenue that I would make it to the end.  But there were still 5 km to go!  By then, my pace had dropped to about 6:15/km, and I was getting slower with each step.  I just had to keep one foot in front of the other.  A woman who turned the corner with me said she didn’t think she could feel her legs.  I guess it was too cold for her.  Personally, I wished I couldn’t feel my legs.  My right leg was especially sore, from the blister on my foot all the way up to my hip.  But I persevered.

I can remember climbing the last hill and knowing that I was going to make it.  I remember turning the corner at Bridge Street in a bit of a daze, and I was confused enough that I needed to ask the police officer which side of the street I was supposed to run on.  As I crossed Bridge Street, I took a hard step off the curb which didn’t feel really great, but I kept going.  Right before the finish, my family was cheering me on, and I felt strong.  I got a high five from a kid along the side, and ran through the finish line with a smile on my face.  

It was a long walk back to the car, but it didn’t matter, because I had done it.  I was sore, I was tired, I was confused, and I was very emotional, but I had reached the end.  I was really happy that my family was there for the journey, and especially at the finish line.

Wow, what a rush!  I’m pretty sore right now, but I made it through the run.  It wasn’t supposed to rain, but it came down pretty hard with a lot of wind in the last 10 km or so.  I think that’s why my pace dropped, although the fact that I went out too fast probably didn’t help.  My goal was to finish in about 4:15, and I actually made it in 4:02 (almost under four hours!).  I’m not feeling as bad as I feared I would, although stairs are still a bit of a challenge.  I hope I can say the same in the morning. It’s a good thing I booked a couple of days off work, and I’ll enjoy being around home with the family too.

It is time. Only 42.2 km to go.

I got up this morning ready for an 8 km (5 mi) run, and just before I left I realized that it was only 6.5 km (4 mi).  Great!  I also finally wore shorts for the first time this season. I wish I had gone with short sleeves too.  It was cool, but quite humid.  One more training run to go!

I think I’m starting to enjoy running in the rain. Or I’m losing my mind.

I was in Walkerton for the Easter weekend, so I went for a run in the country there. This was a 13 km run at an easy pace, although the wind was really gusty, and the hills were unexpected to me. Only three runs left until the big one.