Ottawa Half Marathon Recap

**Please note that this post is picture heavy and a bit long :)

      Last Saturday, I headed to Ottawa to run my second half marathon.  We left Montreal around 10 am and went to pick up our race kits at the Ottawa Congress Center.  Everything went smoothly with the pick up.  My only qualm is that they NEVER asked for ID so I could be picking up a race kit that is not mine no questions asked.

  

With your race kit you get a lovely technical t-shirt, this year it was a beautiful teal.  I had requested an XL since the woman's cut is made rather small and of course they had none left so the lady gave me a L.  When I went home that night and tried it on it was so tight I looked like a porn star.  I made a joke that I would go as a "sexy" runner next Halloween (in the same vain as sexy nurse, sexy cop....)  I could wear my shirt, maybe cut the next to show some cleavage, some compression socks and booty shorts.

     After the race pick up, we went to my friend's place where we were staying to drop of our stuff.  We headed to an organic vegetarian restaurant called The Green Door to have lunch.  All the food was laid out "cafeteria style" and you took what you wanted and paid by weight.  I had some delicious Thai curried tofu, spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) and an assortment of salad's that were beyond delicious.  Once our bellies were full we headed down to watch the 5K race.  Some friends of mince were running their first 5K.  The energy at the race site was magic.

5K runners--I love this picture

All smiles after their first 5K

5K cookies yummy!

    Once they finished their race, we headed out to dinner.  We were 10 people so you can imagine that it was a little tough to find a place to eat.  After trying the third place we finally sat down at a pub.  Those of us running the half in the morning (one guy was running his first marathon) wanted to carb load, but since it was a pub there was only one pasta choice.  The meal took 2 hours to come.  I was grumpy, tired and hungry.  Finally the waitress comes over and tells us that 5 of the kitchen staff walked out that day and they are understaffed in the kitchen and we would be getting our meals 50% off.  Thanks, but where is my food?  FINALLY, our meals came we ate and then headed home to prep for the race in the morning.
   We laid out all our clothes, placed our chip timer on our shoe, packed our drinks and gels, set about 3 alarms for the next morning.


RACE DAY!!!!

Considering this is 6:30 am I look so happy.

     Like a kid at Christmas, I was up at the crack of dawn, no alarms needed.  I got dressed and we headed to the race.  Surprisingly, parking wasn't so bad.  I was so excited.  We found some of our Running Room friends took a picture and we to the start line.  

Running Room Crew

Because there were so many people running the half this year they had to start in two waves.  One left at 9 am and the other left at 9:15.  I was in wave number two and I placed myself in between the 2:30 pace bunny and the 2:45 pace bunny.


*****Side Note:  A pace bunny is an individual who will finish the race in the time they are holding give or take a minute.  If you want to finish the race in 2 hours and a half, run with 2:30 pace bunny.


    The gun went off and it was a go.  It took about 15 minutes for me to actually cross the start line.  I saw my friends that had run the 5k yesterday cheering me on, it warmed my heart.


    The first 10k was great.  I hit the 10k mark at 1 hour and 12 minutes, I was doing great.  Remember that I had only REALLY started training in the last month, because I had all kind of wrist issues as well as lack of motivation.  The shit hit the fan at kilometre 14.  My ankle started to hurt.  Oh did I mention that it was 100,000 degrees, it was as hot as Satan's backyard?  I was sweating like a heaux in chruch.  This caused me to have a headache.  I made sure to drink Gatorade at the the water stations, I also made sure to pour water on my head and face frequently to cool me down.
     At kilometre 15 I had to walk for about 15 minutes and this got me a bit discouraged, to add to that I started to see marathoners who had finished their race (they stared at 7 am that morning) walking back to their cars.  I actually said out loud, "I want to be them right now!".  I started to feel better around kilometre 17 and continued with my 10 minutes of "running" and 1 minute walks.  At 18 km, I heard my name.  I looked up and there were my friends again.  They literally breathed life into to me at that point.  I was ecstatic to have someone cheering for me, I knew at that point taht I was going to finish.  I was going so slow at this point the 2:45 pace bunny passed me, the 2:45 power WALKING pace bunny passed me (yes there were people power walking the half marathon).  The final two km is a loop with the Rideau canal flowing in between.  I could hear the finish line on the other side of the loop and I really wanted to be there.  I pushed and kept telling myself that I could do this.  I walked a bit so that I would run across the finish line.  I did to a bombardment of congratulations from volunteers!  My final time was 2:47, not too bad.  You know that I am going to have to run another half just so that I can have a sub 2:30 time.

I love you medal!

Wow, who would think that I just ran for almost 3 hours.  I look so happy.

Blue Hawaiian? Blue Lagoon? Hypnotiq?  No silly,  blue Gatorade!

     There are always great signs at this race and my favorite this year was:

You have been training for this longer than Kim Kardashian's marriage!

I laughed out loud when I saw that one.

Winning doesn't always mean being first.  Winning means you are doing better than you have ever done before.

--Bonnie Blair