Around the Bay Race Recap

Hello friends!

I am surfacing from my essays, tests and projects to talk a bit about the race last weekend. My friend Leanne and I went down to Hamilton to the expo the day before the race to pick up our race packs and crash at Emma’s house for the night. To refrain from going buck-wild with the expo goods, we sat in the Copps Collisum and had a long talk about life with the finish line looming in front of us. Probably the most symbolic talk about life I have ever had.

We left the stadium and headed to Emma’s beautiful home where we spent the evening eating brown rice pasta, swapping stories and laughing over ridiculous videos.

Leanne and I woke up to an oatmeal bar in the morning (Emma is a ridiculous hostess…she was smashing brazil nuts so we could have some protein). We got ready, said good bye and met up with Mia to go run this race!

We were arriving at the starting line just as the gun had been set off. We madly searched for a place to jump in and it was only until I was trotting along at a 6:00/km pace for the first two km and I saw the 3:30 hr pacer ahead of me that I realized I had jumped in at the wrong spot and there was no way I was going to make my goal of 2:30, especially because I need to run 5:00/km pace for the whole race to get there.

I let that go but I picked up the pace, darting around runners and trying to increase my time. I lost Leanne in the crowd which is understandable because it was a lot of people running (10 000) but I was disappointed because I was hoping to do the whole race with her.

I kept on running and followed Barney Stinson’s rules for running a marathon.

I was really gaining ground and had already passed the 2:45 hr pacer when at around 18 km I felt the familiar stab in my knee from my IT band. I forged on waiting for it to get impossible for me to continue but miraculously, it never did. What did happen was intense pain for the rest of the race which caused me to slow down…WAY down. I drew energy from the crowd and from my music. Surprisingly, the part where I did the best was the hills. All that cross country training on hills really paid off because they were not as bad as what I was expecting.

I was even able to sprint across the finish line at 2:51.51. My best time of 2:34:02 has yet to be matched, but there is always next year.

I was so lucky to have Jesse there to cheer me on and listen to my race, get me some sushi and drive me home. It is only love that would make a non-runner battle those crowds, yell out “You’re looking great!” to runners who look awful, and listen to excited chatter about negative splits from his girl friend and her friends. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

This was my first distance run done with friends and I had a lot of fun with them. It felt like more of an event then just another race.

My thoughts on Around the Bay? Crowded. But that can only be expected with the amount of participants. Lots of energy from the crowds. Bystanders have no idea the positive influence they have on the runners. Organized expo and a lot of history behind the race: It is the oldest road race in North America.

Would I run it next year? Probably not because I am hoping to be living in Quebec at this time, but I also did not love doing long runs in snow storms. I feel like there were quite a few  people who were undertrained for this race. I saw a heart attack, numerous collapses, ambulances and people stopping and pulling out of the race along the way.

I am glad I ran it and I am ready to enter a new season of my training with shorter distances and higher intensity.