The Chilly Half Marathon, in Burlington, is a special race for me because it was the first race that I ran when I started running 7 or 8 years ago. I've also run the race a couple of times as the 1:35 pace bunny. This year, my goal was to run sub 1:30:00. Although this would still be more than 5 minutes slower than personal best, I knew it would be a challenge since I struggled to run 1:32:00 only 2 weeks ago.
I had no excuses going into this race. I felt healthy and had no injuries, with the exception of a scraped up knee from a fall on the trails a few days ago, which doesn't bother me at all when running. The roads were dry and the weather was cool with plenty of sunshine.
The first few km's went well. I was holding the pace that I needed and it didn't seem difficult; but that's how it is suppose to feel in the first few km's. After a short out-and-back section, we turned onto Lakeshore and I realized that there was a pretty significant headwind, which we would be facing for close to 10km. There are plenty of small rolling hills on the course and as soon as I felt the headwind, my attitude changed. I no longer wanted to be there. I've been struggling recently with my mental game. It seems as though I get down on myself as soon as I realize that I'm not going to hit the times that I was seeing 2 years ago. I'm also not training like I was 2 years ago and, therefore, shouldn't expect the same results.
I slowed my pace a little and, once I got over the fact that I would likely have runners constantly passing me for the rest of the race, I started to feel better. Even just 5 seconds slower a km felt more sustainable. I even stopped for about 10 seconds to take a video of the race leader and eventual winner, Reid Coolsaet, fly by. Watching him run is certainly a thing of beauty. At 13k we turned around and headed towards the finish line. At this point I felt way better than I did at 5k or 10k but continued to run at the slightly slower pace. I was still being passed by people, but less frequently and now I was also starting to pick off the odd runner. I decided that if I felt ok at 16k, I would pick up the pace. My thinking was that, since I was off-pace a little anyways, it didn't really matter if I blew up so why not give a little push. When I hit 16k I felt better than I had all race. The wind was at my back and it seemed almost all downhill to the finish. With 1k to go, I realized that if I ran a 4:00/km I would actually hit my goal of 1:30:00. I pushed hard all the way to the finish. The clock showed 1:30:13 but that was the gun time, I didn't start right at the front of the race so I knew that my chip time was going to be really close. I felt great about the fact that I turned the race around and had a good final 5k- my time didn't even matter to me. Seriously.
I picked up my jacket from "bag check" and was heading over to meet my friend for a beer and some vegetarian chilli, when I saw the results pages near the finish line. I went over to check out my time and had to laugh when I read "1:30:00.9". As the saying goes, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades". Maybe I shouldn't have stopped to take that video of Reid!
I didn't break 1:30:00 but, who cares? I felt better than I did at the Grimsby Half Marathon 2 weeks ago and I was proud of the fact that I recovered from feeling low early on in the race. It might be fun to dedicate a few months next year towards training for a fast 1/2 marathon. In the meantime, I've still got 33 more races to go this year!
While your here, check out my race report for the Chilly Half:
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