RACE: CHILLY HALF MARATHON
LOCATION: BURLINGTON, ONTDATE: MARCH 6, 2011
The morning started off as a cold one! We woke up to a massive amount of snow and had an interesting drive out to Burlington to start the race. This race was ment to be a long training run for me as I haven`t been running a lot leading up to the race, and this is the kick off of my 2011 race season. This is also going to be a bit of a come back season for me, as I haven`t race the past two years.
The race was organised well and besides the usual massive lines for washrooms the start was well planned out. The begining of the race was very narrow and congested so it was a bit difficult to get into the starting crowd, but once we got going it improved. Road conditions were still pretty snowy and it slowed down in lots of sections as runners were trying to follow in tire tracks to avoid running in piles of slush.
I started out running with some friends and thought I would use them to help pace me and just try to keep up. At 15km I was feeling great, had a good steady pace going and was really enjoying the run. The route was a lot nicer than I anticipated looking online. It was along lakshore, out and back, through a very pretty subdivision with nice homes and some pretty scenary.
I ended up finnishing with VERY slushy feet in 1:56. I was very impressed that I was able to run close to my old race time with very little run specific training. I do think this reinforced for me the importance of strength work and cross training to improve your running. Despite little run specific training I was able to maintain my speed and cardio. I think this is from a combiation of strength training, cross fit, hockey and cycling.
Overall I was very happy with this result and I think this will be the sign of a good race season to come!
I would definitley do this race again! Even with the snow, slush, cold and soaking wet feet, I had a great time!!
