This was my second year doing the around the bay race and race morning I was looking forward to a good training run. I had taken a few weeks off training the month previous due to a bad case of strep throat and the flu. Once getting back into training I decided to be conservative and take this race as a training run and not push myself too hard. I wanted to get into and stay in a nice comfortable pace.
The begining of the race was great. I contemplated whether or not to wear my running jacket as an extra layer and just like last year i aired on the side of caution and wore the jacket. 5k into the run I was doubting this decision and ended up tossing it to a friend’s husband as I ran by around 10k. I ended up running in asics thin pants and a long sleeve dry fit shirt. It was pretty overcast and a little chilly, however overall it was decent weather for a run. Once i warmed up I only felt the cold in my hands.
Overall the run went pretty well for me. I got into a nice slow comfortable pace of about 6min/Km and held that most of the way through. Having done the race last year it helped having an idea of where the hills were and what to expect. I think once you are prepared and know what is up ahead it makes the ascent that much easier. All I did the last 10k was falsely tell myself how much I love running hills and the reverse psychology seemed to help in some way.
Once i made it up the big hill at the end i looked at my watch and realised that if i picked it up a bit I would finnish in 3 hours, which was close to my finnish time last year. At this point i felt great, so i picked it up for the last 3k and did a nice sprint to the finnish. I ended up within two minutes of my finnish time last year, which I was impressed with for a slow training run.
Overall i think around the bay is a great race. The past two years have been pretty decent weather, great crowds, excellent organization and a lot of fun. The one thing i love about this race it the community support. There are people out on the their front lawns cheering, some families set up their own water stations and were handing out oranges, the guy who dresses up as the grim reaper around 28k and of course the guy who plays Queen at the bottom of the last big hill! This is one race that i may start to make a yearly tradition!
