This past Sunday, Brooke and I ran our second race of the year and I felt considerably better than I did about the Spring Run-Off 8K I ran last month, even though I only fit in one training run of 8K in between that race and this one. The Sporting Life 10K is a fun race because most of the route is south on Yonge Street, and Brooke and I live within ten minutes walk of the starting line. As well, it’s mostly flat or downhill. But the best part is that this race might very well be the largest in the city, attracting nearly 10,000 runners each year. The weather is usually better by this time than it is in early April, too.
That being said, it was pretty cold when we headed out at 7:00am for an 8:00am start. The temperature was around 6° Celsius, though it did get up to about 10° later. Since I’m still without a functioning watch, I had decided to stick with Brooke for as long as possible, but she started to slow down around the 7K mark, so I took off. I wasn’t feeling particularly speedy, but my regular pace is faster than hers. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I struggled a bit for the last few kilometres. I’m definitely not in as good shape as I’ve been in past years. I need to get out and run more between races. But I was still quite happy with my time. I’d hoped to run sub-55:00 and I accomplished that. The discrepancy between gun and chip times is because we were quite far back from the starting line. Unfortunately, gun time is still how races rank you for placing.
Brooke has already signed us up for two more races in June, with a strong possibility that we’ll do a third. The Alfie Shrubb 8K is a small race held in Bowmanville, Ontario on June 1st. And the following weekend, I’m doing the Bread and Honey 5K in Streetsville, while Brooke runs the 15K. The third is the Pride and Remembrance Run, a personal favourite that we’ve run every year since 2003. There is a possibility that we might be in New York City that weekend, so we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully I can secure my Garmin Forerunner 405 before my next race! And run faster! (P.S. Brooke ran 55:10.4)
Gun Time: 56:17.7
Chip Time: 54:32.1
Overall Place: 3072/8590
Gender Place: 2106/3895
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 318/543
2007 Chip Time: 51:22.7 (wow, forgotten how well I did last year!)
2006 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2005 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2004 Chip Time: 52:30.9
I thought the blog looked familiar. My SL 10k time was 54:59. Next up is the Hbc Run For Canada 10k on July 1, then a half in the fall. Nice to meet you at mesh as well.
A half, eh? My limit is 10K, I just get too bored being out there for longer than an hour! Just ordered a Garmin Forerunner 405, which should bring back some of my long lost motivation!
check out http://jameskoole.motionbased.com – I bought a 205. You'll love the 405 combined with either MotionBased or Garmin Connect.
Neat! There's going to be no Mac support for the 405 for a while so I've been looking around for solutions. Have you heard of Ascent? Check out http://www.montebellosoftware.com/.