A few days after Boston, everyone still raw from the attack on our race, my friend Sam direct messaged me on Twitter, asking if I'd consider doing her a favour. The afternoon of Boston, I called her while reporting on the race. She had run it and I was thankful all of those who make up our Toronto running scene were safe. The question us runners asked after Boston was what can we do. Run, I thought. And we did.
The favour? She had a rough recovery from Boston and hoped I'd help co-pace her group, the 3:50s at Toronto Goodlife Marathon. I was scheduled to run it in my calendar and had no real goals as I'm running Ottawa Marathon in late May. A day later, after mulling the 3:50 pace (a little slower than my long slow distance) I knew the answer had to be yes. Yes, of course, I'll pace runners -- runners who want to get to Boston, finish their first marathon and do the full 42.2. I tried a few pace runs in the weeks leading to the race, and was happy to nail it on last week's 20K run.
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| Cut off the sleeves for the heat. |
I spent Thursday (Montreal) and Friday on the road, Friday sitting through an awards ceremony in Ottawa where my fellow journalists were having quite a few drinks while I filled up on water. My 3K run around Parliament Hill on Friday afternoon felt sluggish. It was warm and humid in the capital. Flew back on Saturday and was battling the high pollen count (in Montreal, Ottawa AND Toronto) by taking my allergy medication. Sam on the other hand was nursing an actual cold only slightly improving by the day -- ain't that crazy for her to even go out there. Rock star.
Carbo loaded on Saturday, had a nice afternoon nap and looked at the forecast: Not too great. A high of around 20/21C, with a low of 11C. That's about 5C too warm, so I cut off the sleeves of my pace bunny shirt (awesome decision as it turns out).
THE RACE
Goodlife guys had a good amount of pacers -- 3:45, 3:50 (us) 3:55, 4:00. We quickly had a considerable group around us and I passed along my extra bands. A lot of questions about whether we'd be doing run/walk and most seemed relieved we were doing continuous. The target was 5:27 kms and to go out slightly fast in the first.
The first few kilometres of a marathon are always hectic. I've seen pace bunnies go out way too fast, sucked in by the vacuum that is the start. We went out trying to find our pace, and after a little slow first kilometre (believe me, this is good) we were able to hit it on the second kilometre, only to speed up in the next few. That was fine since we had some downhills and we told our group we'd be going out faster on the down hills. Hoggs Hollow, the one big uphill, was between 4 and past the 5K mark, looks like we did them slightly faster than planned.
1-5K splits (5:31.3, 5:25.8, 5:18.8, 5:15.3, 5:21)
6K to 10K
Down Yonge St we went, Sam and I were really trying to figure ou the pace. With the downhill parts it wasn't an easy task to keep on pace -- you wanted to let the hills do some of the work for you or you end up spending more work hurting your legs. Sam and I worked well, quickly establishing turns holding the pacer sign. The light wind made it fairly easy to hold and we'd pass it off every 30 to 40 minutes.
