I had been debating for a while as to whether I would run the half marathon this past weekend for a while. With my mom in town, and she hasn't seen me race since 2006, I decided to enter and see what I could do.
Weather predictions didn't bode well for the race. As would be expected for the fall classic, the forecast was calling for rain. As luck would have it Thursday-Saturday were next to perfect days and then come Saturday night the sky opened up and the rain started.
Waking up Sunday morning at 6AM I took a quick peak at the weather network and this is what I saw
Now I realize that says Nov 16th, but today and yesterday have had the same weather
It was about 4*C and raining pretty steady for Vancouver. Fortunately though the entire course was always sloped in some direction and the result being I never found the puddles too hard to avoid. Don't get me wrong I was soaked, but at least my feet were never squishing around in my shoes.
I dressed pretty well for the race which made the rain and cold not an issue. The hardest obstacle yesterday was the wind. Being a smaller half marathon than the Victoria half (1000 people vs 5500), I found myself running alone a lot and out along Marine drive the wind really picked up. It would have been smart for me to put in the extra effort to keep right behind people for this section but heinsight is 20/20 right.
All in all I had a good race. Slower than victoria 1:26:29 but considering the conditions I'm pretty pleased with myself.
I could have done a little better with the pacing, I have been running a lot of mile/5k runs lately and when the gun went off, I shot out like a bat out of hell. I ran my first km pulling back at 3:26 pace and was in first place for nearly 800m. Oops, I probably paid for that a little. Live and learn.
I had a lot of trouble seeing the km markers, some of them were hidden in the bushes so I only have a few of my splits.
1km - 3:26
3km - 11:11 (7:44 2k)
8km - 32:01 (20:50 5k)
9km - 36:07 (4:06 k)
10km - 40:19 (4:12 k)
12km - 48:50 (8:30 2k)
18km - 1:14:23 (25:27 6k)
21.1km - 1:26:29 (12:06 -3.1km)
Average pace 4:06 YUCK!
To see how the rest of the UBCTC did check here
4 comments:
But mom got to see ya.
It's really great to be in such a good shape that you can debate whether or not to run a race that's coming up in just a couple of days... or to decide to definitely run it the day before.
Glad you are happy with the time! I find cold races the most memorable in a pleasant way... the hot ones, eh, not so much.
oh for sure, cold races are always badges of honor, hot races are always just dreadful.
The odds of terrible weather were too great for me to run with you in the race!
Way to go. I can't believe you (or anyone) would/could run in that weather.
By the way, I'm still so jealous that UBC has an outdoor pool. The fact that its covered and open in november makes me want to go out there and swim.
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