After the Friday exam terror, came Sunday half marathon terror. The downside to having to start a race at 6:30am is having to leave your friends' housewarming party at 9pm the night before and be in bed at 9:30, while it's still light outside. And then get up at 5am to run for 2+ hours.
My goal was to run in 2:05:00-2:10:00. I'd been roughly averaging a speed of 9:45 per mile for my long weekend runs, and 2:10 was, I thought, a fairly conservative goal, given it was 10:00 miles. I knew to not go dashing off at the beginning, and wanted to run well over 10:00 miles for the first 4 miles just to be safe and not run out of steam at the end. I did feel a bit concerned that I was sweating heavily after no more than 1.5 miles after I was running down the main street in Inglewood; I put it down to adrenaline, but in hindsight, humidity approaching 90% as the race started is probably more to blame.
There was a lot of on course entertainment (Elvis singing on the zoo island, bands in Bridgeland, on 17th Avenue, 14th Street, Memorial Drive), and lots of crowds for stupid o'clock in the morning. I felt fine as I ran past L (who had enjoyed a nice coffee on the patio at Analog), felt fine through Kensington, got to the 10 mile mark feeling a bit warm. And then, approaching the drinks station on Memorial drive at the 10.5 mile mark the roof fell in. Legs went, heartrate went up, my core
overheated horribly. I stopped and started walking, which I tried and tried to put off because I knew it would be a killer for my time, as I knew I wouldn't be able to get my legs going again once I'd stopped. I soldiered on the best I could, with big thanks to the crowd of volunteers in superhero costumes by the Centre Street bridge, and eventually limped over the line in 2:20:37. Had I run all the way I may well have made 2:10.
Once I'd got home, and had a very long bath, the inquest began. I looked at my split times (on the right). The pace was not that fast (I've run faster in training over the first 4 miles pretty much every weekend for the last month beforehand). I can only put the sudden collapse down to either a) the heat/humidity, or b) a relative lack of food. Once you get to Memorial, there is no shade whatsoever, so the last four miles were conducted in blazing sunshine. That shouldn't necessarily be a problem at 8am in the morning, but the sun is strong here and combined with the humidity meant I was probably overheating long before I noticed. And I felt, oddly, very hungry in the middle of Kensington. On my long weekend runs, I ate as I went along, maybe I should try that the next time.
I say the next time. Last Sunday I said you'd have to twist my arm to do the whole thing again. A week later, though, and I'm already finding potential ways to improve matters. Because I got my email link to the official photos taken on the course, and there are a sequence of photos of me being overtaken by a man in a banana costume. And that just won't do.
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