By: Michael Pinkney
This is a well organized race that is full of 10,000 people. The race shirt was nice, and the organizers were fantastic. The following is my story.
My wife and I just had our second child in February. Our oldest just turned two and was getting over a case of strep throat, pink eye, and pneumonia. This was going to be the longest official distance that I have run. My goal time was 2 hours and 30 minutes as I thought 5 min/km was entirely possible for me. With two children, running outside is not necessarily an option before they are in bed, so I turned to the obvious choice of using my bike and Spinervals. I am not sure why this is obvious, but it is the only option I had without falling asleep in a snow pile.
The race itself was exciting. I was initially frazzled as I didn’t know where to park as I had never travelled in Hamilton off of the major highways before. I realized I didn’t have change for my parking meter, and I had to meet up with a friend (Jay Hahn of Angry Seagull Adventure Race) who had picked up my timer chip and race bib number the night before. I left my food and electrolytes in my car as I was in a hurry as the race start was imminent. This silly act of stupidity was going to come back and bite me later, more specifically, it was going to hamstring me. Oh and my phone ran out of minutes as I was placing a call to my Jay to meet up with him.
I somehow found Jay and his wife Jo, and met up with friends Shane and Scott whose wives were racing in the relay division. We all started out together and had a pretty good time. There were lots of cheery people and lots of human traffic period. The first 10km seemed to be really good. I didn’t feel I went out too strong and felt good. My split was around 51 or so minutes. I just had to pick up the pace a little and I would be back on goal, I thought the constant dodging and weaving perhaps accounted for my slight off pace.
The second 10km was also fantastic. The split was closer to 51 minutes and I was pretty happy about this. It was in the section that one of my friend Shane dropped me and kept going his pace, I managed to keep him in sight for a great deal of time, secretly hoping to pass him in the final moments of the race.
The third 10km started out really nicely where we entered some nice rolling terrain. However, at the 21km mark, I started to get a hamstring seize in protest from lack of electrolytes and nutrition. I had to slow down significantly watching the back of Shane as he sped off on the race course. This is where I was kicking myself for not having brought my Ensure and other electrolyte supplements. I kept going while dreaming of E-Discs and hoping that it would disappear. The left hamstring just got worse, and my right hamstring joined in the protest in the midst of the hilliest part of the race. The first 21km of the race were wonderful, the last 9km were not nearly so. I hadn’t run the big hill of the course before and didn’t know what to expect other than it was around the 22km-27km area. Every little hill the course took me on made me wonder if that was the big one. When I finally hit the big one I was rather relieved as I guess my mind made it out to be much larger, plus, I couldn’t really wear myself out on the hill as my hamstrings wouldn’t allow me to go very fast. My cardio was willing, but my hamstrings were not. The most disappointing thing of the race was that the last 4km were downhill and I couldn’t take advantage of it. There were lots of people passing me, in fact in the last 9km I did not pass a single person, so I had lot of time to reflect on others willingness to destroy themselves to meet personal race goals. There was one lady who passed me who was limping (almost dragging one leg) and counting down from 10 repeatedly. She really wanted to meet a goal. There were people breathing like they were breathing their last breath, and there were many other people who were exerting themselves to their bodies max, and they all had one thing in common, they were passing me. I managed to nurse my legs across the finish line in about 2 hours and 46 minutes. The splits were something like 52, 51, and a whopping 64 minutes. My hamstrings cost me 13 or so minutes. I finished so I know the mental toughness is there, but I have to work on the nutrition aspect.
