Fall Classic Half Marathon
This will be a short race report, much as the race itself wound up being shorter than I had initially expected. I had signed up for this, the last big running race of the season before winter fully becomes established, shortly after arriving in Vancouver and had planned to take a short break after the Whistler 50 before diving back in to some speed training in preparation for the Fall Classic and maybe chase the crazy possibility of finishing in the top 10.
However, my failure to actually remember that I’m not invincible following the ultra-marathon saw to it that I was struck down ill with a severe case of pharyngitis - anyone thinking it’s just a simple sore throat is welcome to try it out. Trust me: it sucks! So, my original plan went straight out the window as I spent the next two weeks essentially housebound, my mood not helped by the fact that Raincouver seemed to be doing a dress rehearsal during that very period, with no training even attempted. I’d very nearly taken up the option of downgrading my race distance to a shorter one, even pondering changing to the 5km instead, lacking in confidence as I was that I would be fit and well enough to make the half marathon. I wavered and in hindsight I’m glad I did, ultimately deciding to throw caution to the wind by deciding to turn up, take it easy and just do my best to finish.
This remained my plan right up until the race itself started, with the conditions on race day proving to be the best we could have hoped for. Whilst the day before had been a classic wet, wet, wet Vancouver November day, raining relentlessly, as race morning arrived we were blessed with some clouds, a chilly wind but mostly sunshine and blue skies - perfect!
With my kit bag dropped off and a similarly layered approach to my race wear to that employed in Whistler, I joined the hundreds of other eager runners at the start, choosing to keep relatively middle of the pack, around the 2 hour estimated race time point, and calmly prepared to just, you know, knock out a half-marathon, as you do. We were allowed to listen to music on this race and I’d made sure to select some tracks that I knew would keep me entertained and motivated to keep moving, with a nice balance of slower and more tempo driven tracks to mix things up.
At 8.30 am we were off and I initially settled into an easy pace that I honestly think I could have sustained all day long. Before I knew it I found myself moving past other runners whilst still feeling extremely comfortable, especially up the first short climb of the two lap course. As we turned onto Marine Drive, skirting the coastline to our right and the campus to our left I continued to smoothly and comfortably glide past runners ahead of me, ultimately catching and then passing the 2 hour pacing group. The course then took us off Marine Drive, veering right, and a beautiful long sloping downhill. This, I felt, was a great opportunity to really take some ground and so I opened the throttle, focusing on maintaining short strides but a rapid turnover, feeling as if I was making minimal effort to speed down the slope before reigning it back in for the short climb back up to Marine Drive.
I’d opted to take a water bottle with me, fueling myself with a diluted solution of Tailwind, which meant that I had no need to make use of the aid stations. This, I am sure, was instrumental in enabling me to keep up a good, solid, steady race pace, with no need to slow down at any point. For anything longer than a half this wouldn’t have worked but the single bottle I took out was the exact right amount to ultimately see me to the finish.
As I hit the 7km mark and still felt strong I made the decision at that point to dig in, commit and see what I could actually do with this race. I knew that I still had to be careful as there was still a chance that I may have miscalculated, gone out too hard and fast and ultimately wind up hitting a wall before the 21.2km point. The thing is though that spending the race up to that point doing nothing but pass people without being passed myself was intoxicating. I’ve always loved that feeling and is one of the reasons why I generally always loved getting onto the run stage in triathlons - I’d get to take the names of people who’d earlier sailed past me on the bike. So, decision made: I was going to race this! So much for taking it easy.
The return to campus took us back up Marine Drive before booking a right and straight into another fairly gnarly climb. Once at the top of that we found ourselves veering to the right onto one of the main pedestrian boulevards that run the length of the UBC campus, with a high concentration of vocal support out in force. As I saw the 10km mark come into view I could see that I was on course to post a 50min 10km time, a fact that further buoyed my confidence and spurred me on to try and post a negative split for the day - did I have it in me?
It would be a lie to claim that the second half was as easy on the legs and lungs as the first and I did find myself needing to grit my teeth and dig in more than before, although that was always to be expected. As I caught up to and moved past the 1hr 45min pacing group my thoughts then started to drift towards the finish time I could possibly achieve. I knew that a 1hr 30min finish was out of reach - I just had too much ground to make up to render that a realistic result - but 1hr 40mins had a nice ring to it, right? It was respectably under my initial thoughts of today being a 2 hr ‘just get through it’ kind of deal and in the realms of ‘actually, that’s kind of a fast result’ territory. So there we had it: my goal. It was set and so all I needed to do was keep up the effort, resist the temptation to slow and just push it!
The second climb up to campus was certainly felt and as I rounded the corner my legs were beginning to voice some complaints. Not that it mattered by that stage as the 20km marker loomed into view. 1km, plus a tiddly bit, to go - I was as good as home! As I made the sharp right towards the finish and saw the sign saying 200m to go I made one final plunge into the reserves and dragged what I had left into a sprint, tearing round the final corner and across the line. Wow! What a race! Perhaps two weeks of complete rest had been the best preparation all along?! I’m so glad I stuck with my original half marathon entry as I’d have kicked myself had I come out on the day, felt as good as I had and known that I had taken myself out of the full race. Couldn’t have asked for a better day or a better way to feel my run mojo return. I’d missed it.
