The Race!

Well the day has come and gone. I have officially run my first race. And it was fun! My official time was 35:56 and my real time was 35:40. I’m not sure what the difference is, but regardless that’s pretty darn good! It’s the fastest time I’ve ever done I came in 605th place (hehehe!)

The weather was horrible though – it had been raining straight since Friday night and come Sunday morning there were puddles everywhere and it was still raining.

I left my apartment at 7:30 in the morning, the race was scheduled to begin at 8:30. Ideally it would only take 20 minutes to get there, but the metro (subway) on Sunday’s doesn’t come as often and I had to switch trains. I got there with my friend just after 8am. I had time to find a locker and change despite that it was packed, people everywhere! The 5K event was sold out and there were 1500 people registered for it. There was a 21K at 10am also (my friend was running in that one) and they had almost 2500 registered!

Here was my route:

I ran almost all of it. But I did have to walk twice to regroup. I ran too fast at the start from all the excitement and the people running faster around me so off I went, we also had a small bridge to cross right at the beginning and both of those things together contributed to not being able to properly pace myself so I walked for about 30-45sec to regroup just after the 1K mark I also had to regroup around 3K. But that’s okay.  Here are some photos from the start:

And we’re off!

And here I am in the blue hoodie! My friend got a pic of me as I ran past the start - (I’m the one the arrows are pointing at )

Woohoo!! Everyone who finished the race got this medal. I’ll be honest I love it! I’m such a sucker for stickers and medals and things like that.

And here’s some after pics:

And the most important station – the BAGELS!! It took me an hour to find them and I only found them once I sent my friend off on her 21K (which she did in just under 2 1/2 hours!!!) and they had apples and bananas and I’m happy to report I only ate one bagel! I could have easily scarfed down two, instead I had two small apples (macintosh). Not one right after the other, but a bit later on.

And that was my day! A race done. I still have trouble believing it. A year ago I NEVER would have thought I could have accomplished this. Now I’m thinking of signing up for another one in the fall. Just another 5K. I’d like to get better at this. If I can do it and keep getting better maybe I’ll think about a 10K next year (who is this person?!). The race I want to sign up for is the Oasis Montreal Marathon.  It’s September 25th. So it won’t be too hot, but hopefully it’ll be warmer/better weather then this race!