2010 Goodlife Victoria Half Marathon Race Report

Woohoo...I'm DONE!  And I'm feeling pretty darn awesome.  So let's start at the beginning...

I've posted a few times about how yucky I've been feeling lately and yesterday I was feeling super duper crappy.  I slept in a bit and munged around the house until I had to get my butt in gear and start prepping turkey dinner for Sunday.  As I completed dish after dish after dish, my head was pounding, my stomach was doing crazy somersaults, my foot was hurting and my back was aching.  Not good.  I was seriously regretting my decision to host dinner...but I loooove cooking for other people and I loooooove testing out new recipes on my unsuspecting guinea pigs.  Ha!

So yeah, I was feeling like crap all day and I'd said to Hubs that if M wasn't meeting me in the morning, I would have totally jammed out.  Hubs and I laid all our gear out so we had everything ready for the morning:

We had a nice quiet pasta dinner with my FIL (running the half as well) and stepmom and went off to bed at around 9:30.  I slept pretty well as I was soooo tired so woke up feeling fairly well rested but my tummy was still not happy with me...I had to take a Rolaids as soon as I got up.  The alarm went off way too early at 5:30am...we got ready and out the door by around 6:15am.  I was meeting M at work - she's running the half, her hubby was doing the full and Hubs was doing the 8K road race so the office was kind of a command central for us.  I saw Hubs off at around 6:45am as his race started at 7:15am - I wished him lots of luck on his race as he was hoping to do 45 mins and under.  M and I headed off at around 7am, made a last minute pit stop at the port-a-potties (bleeeccchhhh) and raced to the start line.  We were off!

I decided to break my race down into three parts - I was hoping to do 6:00/km for the first 5K, 5:45/km from 6K - 13K and then finish off with 5:30/K to the end.  If I did this perfectly, I could pull a PB but I wasn't sure how likely this would be given how nasty I was feeling. 

1K - 5K:

Woohoo!  Off we went...M and I were making pretty good time considering how insanely congested the start line was...we were weaving and dodging for probably the first 3 - 4K.  I'd forgotten my iPod so it was so nice to have company along the way and we chatted a bit as we hoofed along.  It was great to see the support from the crowd and saw a few funny costumes - this couple was running along with toy chickens as hats...hilarious!

1K - 6:06
2K - 6:01
3K - 6:02
4K - 5:56
5K - 6:06

So far, so good!  I was staying relatively close to my goal pace.

6K - 13K:

Gu time!  At 6K I took a Gu to keep my energy up.  M was getting hot so I looped her hat around my belt which was kind of funny - made me look like I had a red tail!  My splits were a bit slower than my target, but I was still doing a pretty good pace and not feeling too badly.

6K - 5:59
7K - 5:50
8K - 5:34
9K - 5:56
10K - 5:48
11K - 5:41
12K - 5:32
13K - 5:39

14K - 21K:

14K was Gu time again and it was much needed.  The wind started kicking up at the 15K point along the water and we were running right into it.  I was tiring fast, and had to put my head down to fight against it.  It was pretty warm when we first started, but it was freezing at this part.  I kept looking at my watch to see if I'd hit sub two hours, but knew I'd just miss it...bah!  Darn wind.  I kept pushing on though, and here were my final splits:

14K - 5:31
15K - 5:29
16K - 5:33
17K - 5:42
18K - 5:47
19K - 5:29
20K - 5:46
21K - 5:31

Overall pace:  5:49
Chip time:  2:02:44
Overall:  2640/6822
Place in Age Division:  164/461
Place by Sex:  1288/3681

Woohooo!!  As I crossed that finish line, I did my Asian gang signs for R and got my medal from my coworker A, who was volunteering at the finish line.  As I walked up to her to get my medal she didn't see it was me and dropped it on the ground.  I laughed and said "what, you expect me to pick up my medal off the ground?!" and she looked up, saw it was me and we started laughing!  We hugged and as we pulled away I kind of swayed a bit....I was a little out of balance...my legs were used to runningrunningrunning so stopping that suddenly was hard!  I had a hard time keeping my balance on the way to the food but my legs weren't as crampy as they were last year - a good sign that I'm definitely more fit!

Even though I didn't PB, I'm really happy with how I did considering all the troubles I'd had with injury and illness.  My foot held out...I could feel it in the beginning but didn't feel it much through the race and it's not bothering me at all right now - yay!  Hubs came down to meet me and it was so nice to get a big hug from him at the end.  Hubs did awesome - 44:56 for the 8K...nice work, Honey.  I wanted to watch the first group of marathoners come in so we headed back to the office where I showered up quickly (damn, it felt good to get into a hot shower!) and we trotted back down to the finish line. 

I'm soooo glad I did this.  The three plus hour half marathoners were coming in, and it was so fantastic to see people of all shapes, sizes and age ranges coming across the finish line with huge smiles on their faces!  A few of the finishers brought tears to my eyes as they were so excited to finish.  We watched this one fellow who was 83 years old, legally blind and had recently lost 120 pounds when he started running at the age of 80.  I loved seeing this - you don't have to be an elite athlete to run and it doesn't matter what your time is or what kind of fitness level you are.  These people were just getting out there and to see the joy on their faces as they finished was really something.  The crowd was fantastic too - big cheers and claps for everyone.  So, so awesome to see. 

So all in all - a great race.  I did get a little tiny bit verklempt when I saw the first marathoner come in, but it quickly went away.  There's always next year, right?  And what would I blog about...so it's a good thing, n'est ce pas?

Now on to Thanksgiving dinner - bring on the mashed potatoes and gravy!  Peace out homies, and hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with your fams. XO