Chicopee

Chicopee

Sunday, November 19, 2017

October Races Part 2: Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon

I'm sitting in my hotel room the day after JFK, so what better to write about than a race that happened a month ago? ;)

Let's see what I can remember... it wasn't an overly eventful race except for the fact that it was the first time in my life that I've had an adverse reaction to a gel. My favourite flavour had been discontinued, so I used a different flavour of the same brand thinking it would be fine.... nope. Turns out strawberry banana powerbar gels do not agree with me.

OK.. I'll back up a bit now.

I stayed in Toronto for the weekend of the race. Since I work in the city, I went to into the office on the Friday (as usual), stayed in the city for the weekend and then worked in the office again on the Monday (not the usual... I'm generally at home on Mondays). It was a good weekend overall.

On the Friday night, I enjoyed some live music and went for a walk along the waterfront. Saturday, I met up with a friend for lunch, then had dinner with some friends from my run club who were staying in Toronto Saturday night for the race Sunday. Then, on Sunday, it was race day.

I started out just in front of the 3:15 pace group, and was running along comfortably, when I noticed at 6k ish that I was next to the 3:10 group... whoops! I wasn't intending to be there, but sort of went with it for a while, but around 18 or 19k, I realized that it felt slightly more difficult than it should this early in the race. It didn't feel hard, but I knew it felt hardER than it should. So, I backed off a wee bit. All was well after that, until around 26K when I took the aforementioned gel that did not agree with me. It made me want to throw up. I battled that.... but by the time it no longer made me feel sick, I was mentally out of the game. I got back into it around 34K, but at that point, it was just to stay under 3:20. I finished in 3:19:21... so nothing great, but nothing horrible.

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