Short endurance races, half marathons are a great course-length to test your ability to run a modest, achievable distance. Whereas a full marathon pushes a typical runner past the point of exhaustion, requiring on-course fuelling, long-haul mindsets and perfect pacing plans, a halfer can be done with a bit of water and a “take yourself to the edge of you ability” approach. Run hard, run long. Run. I typically hit the two hour and change mark, but my crew is plus or minus 30 minutes on that pace.
Ready to run?
Sunday Runday, and just over a week after rolling through the finish line of three Florida Disney World races, I did a (socially distanced) ten klick run back with the crew through the icy streets of Edmonton.
Amazing. Crazy. Chaotic. Nostalgic. Insane.
What other words can one use to describe the first international mega race back after a multi-year break from the same.
Having spent about three and a half hours running an ultra-style half marathon yesterday, the first actual bibbed, chipped, other-people-on-route race I’ve run in nearly two years, I was feeling very tired.
By the time I crawled out of bed yesterday morning, the folks who tackled the much longer distances, eighty and one hundred kilometers, had already been running for a couple hours.
The twenty-one kilometer race was set to start at noon, so I had plenty of time to sip my coffee, make pancakes for the family, do some stretches and prep my gear.
The day I registered for a couple virtual races was the same day that I found out -- officially -- I'd be working from home for the entire summer. At least. With a minimum of three more months of pandemic not-quite-lockdown facing me down and getting me down, I figured one of the only solutions for my personal health and fitness was to lockdown some real goals. Challenges are one thing but an actual, paid-for, medal-in-the-mail virtual race is another.
The rules I put in were simple:
The day I registered for a couple virtual races was the same day that I found out -- officially -- I'd be working from home for the entire summer. At least. With a minimum of three more months of pandemic not-quite-lockdown facing me down and getting me down, I figured one of the only solutions for my personal health and fitness was to lockdown some real goals. Challenges are one thing but an actual, paid-for, medal-in-the-mail virtual race is another.
The rules I put in were simple:
About 15 klicks into this morning's race I remembered why I never do this run.
I ran my last half marathon of the year in October and a summer of training followed by an autumn of faster training netted me a pretty decent time.
About mid-month we packed up the new car and drove for twelve hours westward on Friday morning. It was planned. I had registered for the Okanagan Half Marathon in Kelowna, British Columbia, a beautiful little mountain valley city on the edge of a lake and tucked inside a microclimate that made it feel more like September than the nearly-winter chill back home.
On the first day of August I woke up shortly before six in the morning, laced up my sneakers, walked down towards the pond near where the swans were still dozing, and started to run.
San Fransisco was a whim.
I mean, who doesn’t have “run across the Golden Gate Bridge“ on their bucket list? Or, at the very least, the flexibility to add it when six weeks before a race there a cheap flight is discovered online and karma aligns for a weekend getaway in California?
Las Vegas was, believe it or not, a family vacation.
We connected with Jenn and family and planned a multi-week trip that started with a race and ended with a theme park. Vegas was not the first choice for a race, tho. Originally, we had been talking about a California adventure that included Disneyland and one of those great RunDisney races I'd done previously. But the RunDisney folks seemed to have dropped all plans to continue running through Anaheim.
Plan B was to fly to Vegas, run the Rock'n Roll down the strip, then drive over to California.
“It was windy.” …was how I’ve described it to anyone and everyone who asked. In that reply, I suppose, is embedded the obvious conclusion that the wind was a factor in my result. Rather, and contrary to that bit of evidence, I would suggest that it just was windy. Not a windyness factor. Just, it was windy. The wind was blowing. Statement. Fact. Because the simpler truth is that such as statement is the nearest I’m able to come to conveying a simple relatable aspect of the race itself.
Rewind.