MEC Race Below Zero

Tags

joy, Ottawa, race, Racing, Run Ottawa, Running, winter

Hey! Is this thing still on?

I’ve had a crazy month or so and I haven’t posted! I’ve been tweeting about running though, so you can catch up on my twitter. You may remember that I was planning on doing a winter race. I did it last year and lucked out with really warm weather!

Let’s take a step back here and talk about the race. MEC always does a great job of organizing cheap, and fun races. This time, it was a 5k or 10k race out by the Rideau-Carleton raceway. It’s kind of out of the way, but the start and finish was on the race track!

We had kind of a crazy race morning. My dad was also doing the race and we had to go pick him up. Since my parents’ house is so far away from the race, we stayed there the night before and had a 30 minute drive to the start. There was also a bit of a snow storm the night before which made things slow. We still got to the race with plenty of time before the start.

The weather wasn’t as nice as last year. It was -11 with some wind and it was cloudy. It even snowed a bit. However, the weather was so warm last year that we weren’t allowed to run on the track because they thought we would damage it. This year, we would finish on the track! This also made it easy for my faithful cheering squad/ driver (Alex) watch from inside.

I wasn’t sure what to expect because I was still building up my base and had done no speed work. I decided to shoot for under an hour and just see where that took me. Here I am along the course!

It was an out and back course with two loops. It was fairly flat but there were some small inclines. Also there was a slippery section around where we made the transition back onto the race track.

For the first half of the race, I felt pretty good. My hands were a bit cold but other than that, I felt good. I kept playing leap frog with this very tall girl and her friend. It was kind of helpful though because she was blocking the wind for me! Most of the time I was kind of annoyed by it though. Not because we were trading places but because she was so tall that she kept blocking me from being in the pictures that the camera man was taking.

After the first lap was done, I was still feeling pretty good. I tried to increase my pace a bit because I really wanted to try to come in under 58 minutes. Unfortunately, this was just as pipe dream for my fitness level.

Halfway through the second lap, I just had no kick left. Not having any speed work before the race and limited runs in generally definitely killed me. I just tried to grit through and get the race done. I did manage to pick it up once I got back on the race track and I did my best impression of a race horse. I did just that and finished in 58:22. I think this is technically a PR, but it was only by a few seconds. I’ll take it!

I got a really cool finish picture too! And after that happened, my friend who happened to be at the race accidentally took my picture. He was getting a picture of the course and he happened to take it right as I was walking inside.

Here are my splits.

I had a decent race considering my light training. I wanted to use this race as a gauge of my fitness and I was happy with the results. Now I have a baseline for where I’m at and can only get faster from here. My goal is to finally crack 2 hours in a half marathon. I think as long as I can stay healthy (as in my knee issue that I was having) I can definitely do it.

I will be better about posting again soon!