"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" ~ Seneca

Sunday, May 25, 2014

To the hills

Yesterday was race day and it turned out quite well.  The weather was perfect, sunny, slight breeze, ~15c at the start. It did get warm durning the race, but better than rain or snow. I do wish they would have earlier starts for these races, push it to an 8 am start and then it won't get so warm. But enough of my complaining, on to the race:
I signed up for the 15K and went in with little to no training. We had just come back from holidays in Hawaii where the majority of my exercise was walking & swimming. I was curious to see what (if any) endurance I had. Again my goal for this race was to finish. So we started off just after 9 with a gradual climb to Nose Hill. Afte the first km my mouth felt dry, so I popped some stinger chews and drank some Nuun. I settled into an easy pace knowing the hills were coming. I'm not a fan of run:walk, but today I was listening to my body. So I walked up the hills. Sometimes I would walk to the top, sometimes I would start running before I crested. So I puttered along on my own. I hit the 7.5 km turn around point at ~52 min. Drank some water, gave myself a pep talk and started the trip back.
I was looking forward to the downhill, but there were a lot of rollers so the downhill didn't truly kick in until ~12.5 km. I tried to open up my stride and let gravity do most of the work.  I found out how challenging it is to run negative splits- even downhill! I was able to click a time of 1:45:06. Considering I ran a 15K last year on the flats along the Bow in ~1:40 last year, I'm happy with this. Just imagine if I had trained?!
Here's to the MEC Calgary, Race #4 in 3 weeks at North Glenmore Park.

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