Calgary Police Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

Well, I mean this run sucked. Again, I wanted to use this run as an indicator of my training for my marathon in May. Thankfully there were tons of other nutty people out there running in a spring blizzard. Started pretty good. I wanted to hit a 5:17 pace. Well, made it the first 1k at 5:17, and that is because it was down hill. Would be the fastest I ran during the race until the end, which is up the same hill.

Anyways, lots of people. I started pretty close to last I think so I spent the WHOLE race passing people. Probably passed, oh, I don't know, 1,000 people. I am silly this way. I hate the crowd at the start but then I end up elbowing my way through the crowd down the road.

Actually it wasn't that bad that often. First bit is on the road so lots of openings, then we run into the park onto the little paths. FRACK they were icy at spots. Couple down hills we ended up walking people were so skiddish. Couple people bailed, HARD, it looked like.

Anyways, picked my way through, felt good, the path way is in the trees so the wind and snow not so bad. Footing was horrible though. Ran into Neil on the course early on. Also ran into Fraser. Ran into Rob about half way.

At around 6k this speedy guy blows by everyone. He won the Glencoe 2 weekends ago, must have started late, he ended up taking 2nd overall, nifty to see him bounce through the course like that though.

Ran a bit with these speedy guys, one who is a barefoot runner, and his brother. Dude wasn't barefoot today. So that was kinda nice, moved at an okay pace for a while with then, but then invariably had to slow down for ice or giant friggin lake sized puddles. Hell, at one point for about 1k we were running through single track lumpy bumpy snow that was more like a poorly packed snowshoe trail than anything else.

So the run was good enough, then we climb out of the park, which is brutal but there were tons of people (for a day like today) some bag pipes, all chanting us up the hill. I think that is about 6k out, and the weather started to suck then. "Out of the trees you could really feel the wind and the snow. The road was pretty slippery with snow/slush. It sucked so bad. Serious gut check time out there.

Anyways, still passing people, passing tons of people. I mean line up upon line up of people. Where did all these people come from. Really poured it on at the end. Managed a 4:30 pace the last 400 meters (up the same little hill that started the race). Passed one of the few people who passed me during the race right near the end.

I got to cowboy up and seed myself right. I think if I was running with some faster people instead of always passing people I would have been a bit faster. I had an artificial sense of my own speediness because of this.

I had that run tuesday, but I wouldn't take it back. This race is just part of a bigger picture.

Walked a bit, then ran back about 1k to find Neil. Crazy mother took his shoes off and was running. Ha. Anyway, I offered to carry his shoes and cheered him on to the finish. No shoes, crazy.

Got into the gym, had some grub, then sat around waiting for the awards. Too stiff after because of this. Should have done some yoga or something, I mean they had a group of people doing yoga right there, dumb dumb and lazy.




Middle of heavy training. Whatcha going to do. Oh, and the WEATHER.

Ha. Oh, the Mcmillian calculator gives a spot on correlation between my 10k 2 weeks ago and my HM today. HA. So I guess if my marathon takes place in similar horrible conditions I can confidently use McMillian to set my pace.


Good for the RD for going ahead with the race in horrible conditions. lol. Wow. Good for the volunteers. Post race grub sucked, apples, bananas, cookies, muffins. Gee. A slice of bread or some cheese would have been nice. Maybe a hot cup of coffee.