I now know why bears hibernate in the winter!!! I spent most of Friday afternoon dozing off (even though I was over at my sister’s for dinner. Sorry sis :p) . Considering the race was pretty short and I did not feel I went very hard, most of my energy expenditure was due to the cold conditions. Mind you averaging 6hrs of sleep a night for the last week probably didn’t help much either. Or maybe I’m just getting lazy.
So I woke up early Saturday morning and checked the weather forecast: A beautiful –5C and flurries again… woohooo!!! At least it’s a running race today. The wind chill factor is not as deadly as in cycling.
My legs were feeling pretty good. I had a few sore spots from the crash yesterday (looks like someone’s handlebar found my rear end too tempting to avoid) but otherwise I was feeling pretty light on my feet.
I decided to race in pants and long sleeves. I also threw in a pair of arm warmers and a sleeveless vest for good measures. I figured there’s no need to pull a cold muscle or get sick for a training race, especially this early in the season.
I also made the wise decision to make a quick pit stop right after picking up my number. It was still a good 45min before race start but with over 2500 people racing I knew better than to wait another 30min. There was no one in line at that time yet, but sure enough, 20min later there were nice lineups despite the large number of port-o-potties. Chalk it up to experience :-p
The warm up went pretty well. The legs were pretty bouncy which is usually a good sign, although I did have a feeling of overall tiredness.
With a couple of minutes left before the start, I made my way through the crowd and stood close to the front. I love standing there right before the start as I usually get to bump into friends I haven’t trained with in a while. We quickly gave a couple of pats on the back and gave the obligatory ‘have a good race’ (of course hoping that you’ll have a better race :-p), and off we were…
A fast group quickly formed at the front with 3 of my friends in it. Knowing what shape they are in, considering that I spent most of the winter on the bike and given that I have not done any anaerobic work yet, I decided to let them go and settle in at a comfortable pace for the first half.
I felt fairly comfortable for the first 5km although I was running on my own and was being battered by the wind in some sections. Having raced the previous day didn’t help either and I started losing ground to a group of runners I had managed to keep within 200m of me up until then. When I crossed the finish line, I didn’t feel like I had pushed that hard. All I could think off was how nice the bed would feel when I got home and took a nap 🙂 I ended up finishing in 27:52, 15th overall. Good enough for the day.
With the exception of a couple of surges, most of the race was close to hard tempo pace, so I’m fairly happy with the results although I was hoping to be closer to 27min at that effort.
Up next: Mosport Spring Classic. Hopefully the weather will be a bit nicer.
