Ottawa Half Marathon

I haven’t been running much at all, and went into this race not having much of an idea what to expect. I thought that the long hours put in on the bike might translate well into end of the race endurance. Did an interval workout two weeks ago when my bike was being fixed up and thought I might be able to run at 8-minute mile pace. The course is flat so this would put me around a 1:45:00 time. The weather forecast was good too, 60°F, cloudly, and a small chance of light showers by the end of the race.

I lined up with the 1:30-1:45 group. About 2 minutes before the start the field compressed and pushed up and all of the sudden I was in the sub-1:30 group. Oops.

For the first 2 km (everything is in km here, not miles, so bear with me) I started with what felt like a good relaxed pace. My headphones were blasting which is something I like to do when I run so I can’t hear how loudly I’m breathing. It tends to freak me out and slow me down.

At the 5 km mark I was looking for a timing clock but there wasn’t one anywhere and I wasn’t wearing a watch. The course cross the river and we leave Ottawa and enter it’s sister city, Hull, which is in the French-Canadian province Quebec. I tried asking a nearby runner if he knew the time but he said something back to me in French. Sweet. I had no idea how fast I was going but I was breathing pretty hard and my knee was showing signs of tightening up, so I eased up off of what I thought was an 8 minute mile pace.

The Ottawa Marathon didn’t have a single timing clock out on the course, but instead they had runners with pink paper bunny-rabbit ears that held signs indicating the pace they are running at. Must be a Canadian thing. After easing up a bit at around 6 km the 1:40 pace bunny passed me. I guess I had been running a little faster than I wanted to at around a 7:30 minute mile pace. This lifted my spirits for a while.

The course crosses the river again at around 10 km and we go back to Ottawa. I was feeling pretty good through here but I think the large number of spectators may have helped with that. I had a PowerGel around 8 km so I had lots of energy, just a few pains in the left knee and right hip.

By 12 km the course is parrelelling a canal and it’s something like 5 km out and 5 km back to the finish. You can see the elite runners coming back on the other side of the canal which is encouraging for a little bit, but it gets old fast. By 14 km I was just praying that we’d cross a bridge to the other side. Both of my knees and hips were hurting pretty bad.

Not much happened in the last 7 km of the race except that I just kept going slower and slower. My knees, hips, ankles and feet were just on fire. A 3:20 marathon pace bunny passed me with 4 km to go. At first I thought it was a 2 hour pace bunny which was really frustrating. Again I had little clue as to how fast or slow I was going. Shortly behind the 3:20 marathon bunny was the 1:50 half marathon bunny. That’s more like it.

I tried to stay with the 1:50 bunny but I could hardly move my joints hurt so badly. This must be what it feels like to be 70 and have arthritis.

With maybe 1 km to go my ankle started spasaming which almost sent me to the ground. For some reason my left arm was doing the same. This happened three or four times during the last 1,000 meters to the finish. Good thing the race wasn’t another mile longer because I don’t think I would have made it.

Crossed the finish line with a time of about 1:52 even.

Looking back at my prediction of 1:45 I think it was a little aggressive. I checked my training log after the race and realized that I’d only run 13 miles so far this year. I knew I hadn’t been running much but I thought I was more in the 30-50 mile range. Haha, oh well. Interesting science experiment if nothing else. Two days later I’m still incredibely sore, to the point that I’m walking funny. Hopefully I’ll be able to recover in time for the Lake Auburn race this weekend.