Around the Bay 30K

Sorry its taken me a while to get this together. Actually, I don’t have it together, and I’m making it up right now as I type. Its the best I can do these days.

Anyway, I ran Around The Bay, in Hamilton, Ontario on Sunday, the 30K I’ve been training for these past few months. It was about a 4.5 hour drive for me but it turned out to be a great race. I managed to snag a hotel room at the Sheraton which is right on top of Copp Colleseum where the start and finish were, so that made it easy to get where I needed to be.

I went to the spaghetti dinner the night before the race. And let me say that the Canadians take spaghetti security very seriously. I don’t think there were that many security guards at the airport. I’m not sure what they thought might happen, but we were safe if anything did.

At dinner Bart Yasso from Runner’s World gave a talk about some of his marathons. The Antartic Marathon. The Mt. Everest Marathon? There was one across death valley where it was 117F in the shade, at night. It was a great presentation.

Race morning. I didn’t have a chance to bring my usual breakfast food so I went to the continental breakfast at the hotel (included in the room price). They had a good assortment of stuff so I was good to go. Toast, juice, oatmeal, a little scrambled eggs. David had made some comment about getting a little protein in with carbs so I thought the eggs would help.

The view from the breakfast room looked out over the bay and you could see the entire course from where I sat. Except the hill. :)

Back at the room. Its 2C outside. What do I wear? I had brought the full array of clothes, but decided to brave the embarassment and go wth the lycra. Shorts were almost too cold, and sweats would definately be too hot. Lycra, and my running jacket. And my lucky race shirt.

I headed to the bag drop in the colleseum only to find that themline was 10 miles long. I was already late to meet Ali and Warren. So I RAN back to the hotel room, dropped the bag there and RAN back to the meeting place. I found Warren and a little while later Ali showed up. I was hoping to spot Beansprout and Cliff, but no luck today.

We headed over to the start and Ali quickly vanished off into the crowd. 7000 runners? Something like that. It was crowded. Warren and I ran for the first few kilometers together and then he said he was picking up the pace. “Ok, see you at the fini…”

The shockwave from the warp drive was incredible.

I swear he totally vanished. I was looking for that orange hat of his and he was just gone. I kept thinking of that line from his blog where he said “…the day I became fast.” The man was lightning.

The course was marked in kilometers and I didn’t know how to handle checking my pace. Foolishly, once again, I set up the autolap and virtual partner. I should have used the manual lap button and marked the kilometers myself. Naturally, Forerunner got lost and the course distance got screwed up. Sigh.

So, I ran. I knew the pace I needed but it felt good to run a little faster. My shins felt great and my hip/thigh/quad issue never appeared.

There were tons of people on this course. Cheering and yelling and folks were handing things off to loved ones as they ran along. One woman is telling her friend on a cell phone to call “Dave” to meet her someplace and to bring her gloves, and I yell out “And call my Mom too!” Scattered laughter from the runners. :D

Lots of aid stations on this race. I think I like seeing the distance marked in kilometers because the signs appear more frequently and help to pass the time. I did start to feel fatigued someplace near the 10K mark, so I ate a gel and that seemed to help a bit. I tried not to overhydrate, just took a gulp at every other aid station. Just the Gatorade. I love the “pop pop pop” sound from the cups dropping at the aid stations.

Someplace between 10K and 15K I passed Beansprout, but I never saw her. I was looking though. I almost got brave enough to tap one runner on the shoulder but too much “Are you beansprout?” from the salty faced American and they would have hauled me off the course. So I just kept running.

At one point we ran across a steel deck bridge. I looked down and it was really disturbing to see the water. I felt all woozy when I did it so I started looking ahead again. And running on the deck hurt my feel too.

The wind had really picked up on the far side of the bay and I had to zip my jacket up again and get the gloves out. Actually, I found I was putting on and taking off the gloves several times during the race. The temps swung wildly as we went in and out of the wind. I’m glad I had the jacket, and shorts would have been horrible when we got to the windy parts.

Someplace in here Forerunner started to deviate from the course I think. I had been tracking the kilometers perfectly and then I looked and it was off by a whole kilometer, adding more distance. If I didn’t know Forerunner was a total liar (all the freakin’ time!), I would say they had marked the course wrong.

When we moved to the neighborhoods, the hills began. There were gentle hills at first and then some big ones came in. I found some girls along the way who were handing out orange slices in the middle of one hill. I stuffed one down and it was great. I think it was better than a gel, and at this point I was getting the pre-rummbly feeling in my tummy. There was another guy with grapes and those hit the spot.

Up one hill we passed a woman in an SUV being stopped by a cop at the crossroad and she’s screaming “How am I supposed to get home? I live on that street and you’ve blocked all the roads to my house!” Truck full of kids. I’m sure she had to sit there for an hour at least.

I was feeling really good as the race got to the 25K point. I was thinking, this race is just about over. Then the road began a really hard slope downwards. I lengthened my stride and tried to float down the hill and not kill my quads. It felt like the hill angle was about 45 degrees. And twisting turns. Just crazy, but I made it.

Then it went back up.

This was THE hill. And it was about a kilometer long I think because the 26 mark (or was it the 28K?) was right in the middle of it. Lots of folks were walking up it, but me and another guy just powered up it. I thought about “the hill from hell” on my trail runs and decided there was no way I was going through all that training to end up walking up this damn hill. We were booking.

And before I knew it, the hill was gone and we were sailing along on the top heading towards the finish. Air. Please get me some air. :)

So the last few kilometers were hard. The hill had taken alot out of me and I was starting to get a side stitch. I sucked in my gut hard and that seemed to relieve it some. One more gulp of Gatorade and then on to the end.

I passed the Grim Reaper and gave him the high-five. The end was near. I pushed as hard as I could to have a nice fast finish.

I got near the Colleseum and there were 10000 people screaming along the sides. It was really great. Down the ramp and out into the stadium and holy moly! The place was packed with people! Some guy skirted by me on the ramp and pushed me down a notch in my age group but I didn’t care.

Got my medal and was quickly ushered out of the stadium. They handed me a bottle of water and a goody bag with food. I was done with the water before I got up the escalator. I felt like I was going to fall over. My hips gave out and my quads had turned to rock. I tried to stretch but couldn’t hold myself up enough to do it so I walked around. I needed water but there was none. Even the drinking fountains were turned off, so I walked back to the hotel.

There’s a big mall under the hotel and I cut through there. I walked with a guy who I saw at the dinner the night before and we chatted about the race. Another person who was too polite to tell me my face was covered in salt chunks. Back at the room I cleaned off the salt, and drank half a gallon of Gatorade. I ate everything I had brought with me. Then shower. Then back on the road for home.

Oh yeah, and when I got to the border, the customs dude asks me what race I was in and he asks my time. 2:43 and change. “Oh, that’s so slow! Some women came through earlier and they were under 2 hours.” Thanks, dude.

Analyzing the stats:

The chip time was off from the gun time a bit because we were in the back. But crunching the numbers from the 10K, 15K, 20K and finish mats I get:

1st 10K - 58:49
2nd 10K - 54:50
3rd 10K - 53:26

Negative splits? Really? I think that’s a first for me in a race. Can ya tell that hill was in the 3rd 10K? :D I think all the hills in my trail run training really helped for this race. The soft trails saved my legs and the hills gave me the stamina I needed.

So, overall it was a great race. I got to meet two very cool people from the RBF. Unfortunately, I did not get to share some chocolate with them. I did bring some but circumstances denied me a chance to bring it to them. Sorry guys. But I didn’t have any of it myself either. Drove almost 10 hours sitting next to it and never tasted a bit. I am a rock.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 7:19 am and is filed under Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.