Half Marathon Race Day

We got downtown early, and even though it was still quite cool out it felt like it was likely to be a warm day. I made a last minute change from a tech shirt into a singlet. I found out last week that a friend was running, and aiming for the same pace, so we decided to start together. We made it really clear though that if either of us wanted to go faster, we’d just take off. My goal for the half marathon was to do it in under 2 hours, and I was hoping that hitting a 5:30/km pace would be a good pace. I was pretty nervous yesterday and today about whether I could hold that pace for the whole race though. I wanted to do the 1st 2 km at a 5:40 pace, for a bit of time to warm up, and since I knew that the crowds would make it hard to set my own pace. Before the race they announced that there were 10,000 runners starting the half marathon today.

We got a pretty good start, and didn’t really have to do any weaving through traffic at all. We saw someone fall just a bit behind us after about 500m, and I slowed almost to a stop, but people seemed to be doing a good job of getting her back up. Yesterday someone almost got trampled in the 5k, and I was pretty upset to see nobody slowing at all to help. It only took us about 3 minutes to settle into a good pace. I knew we were going a bit fast, and sure enough the first km took 5:18. OK I said, we’re going too fast, we should ease up a bit. The second km took 4:56. At that point I decided that I was feeling really good, and would see what I could manage, but that I absolutely needed to ease up a bit and focus on effort level. So we kept knocking off km’s, running at around a 5:15/km pace.

The run through Gatineau went pretty well. There was almost no crowd support there, just the occasional curious looking onlooker. But as we came back over the bridge to Ottawa around the 9km mark the crowds picked up. Our gun time at the 9 km mark was 49:00. From that point on there were people cheering all the way in. There’s a long stretch along the canal from around km 10-15, and we saw several people down getting medical help along here. It was really feeling hot, the sun was just blazing. Then we finally went up to a bridge to cross the canal, and I was sure I was going to make it. I kept feeling good, and we kept up the pace, and were even going a few seconds per km faster from kms 10-16.


Across the canal we picked up the 1:50 pace bunny, and were around her and her group a lot at that point. At km 17 I picked up the pace a bit more, almost losing my friend in the process. Km 17 took 4:53, but after that I slowed back to about a 5:05/km pace and there was my friend at my elbow again. Someone in the crowd gave me a freezie here, it looked so inviting but when I tried to eat it I thought it was coming back up. Someone else gave me an ice cold water bottle – much better. With 3 km left to go, I started to feel worn down. My legs really wanted to stop. The 1:50 pace bunny was telling her people they were right on target, and to go ahead, but looked to be seriously hurting. My Garmin told me that the 1:50 pace bunny had little chance of finishing in 1:50. At the 19 km mark, we left the 1:50 bunny behind, but I was starting to seriously hurt. I tried reminding myself of the 2 km last stretch of one of my runs, but that didn’t help at ALL. But I was hanging in and holding the pace, km 19-20 took 5:09. The rest is a blur, I was dead on my feet, but wasn’t willing to stop. The last km seemed to take forever, but I was convinced that slowing down would only prolong it at this point, and I was NOT willing to slow down. With 500 meters to go I was having a hard time imagining running that far! The crowd was great here though, the bleachers were packed with people. My friend gave a burst of speed in the last 50 m, and finished 2 seconds in front of me. My final chip time was 1:51:11. I honestly feel like that is as fast as I could possibly have run it, there was barely enough left in the tank to get me to the recovery area.

My final pace (Garmin) was 5:11/km or 8:20/mile.