So I did a half marathon

[summilux]

On a dare, I did a half marathon yesterday (Army Run Ottawa). I’ve never been much of a runner. I’ll do it when I travel on business but generally only for short 5km distances. I trained for about 7 weeks and logged something less than 300km on the road. I jumped into the tail end of 18-week training plan, figuring my cycle fitness would transfer. This may not have been the best way to do it, but fortunately I didn’t get injured. Training was much less time-intensive than cycling, a 2-3 hour long run on the weekend and a few hours in total scattered through the week. I didn’t do any riding during training except for my work commute and I’m anxious to get back on a bike now. I miss the adrenalin of a fast ride and I miss the “head popping off” agony of a long steep climb. That said, I liked running much more than I expected. There is a meditative aspect to it. On a bike my mind is constantly working: checking for traffic, looking for potholes and obstacles, thinking about gearing and cadence, checking the Garmin etc. On long slow runs, it’s quite pleasurable to put the brain into neutral and just cruise along.

The race day was quite a treat. There were twenty thousand runners doing 5k, 10k and the half. Milling about a crowd that size was cool. They were also thousands of people lining the course: bands, bagpipers, cheer squads, people in costume, people in wigs. All shouting and screaming and high fiving runners. They really made it special. I had hoped to run a 2’25” half but race day was one of the hottest we’ve had all year. High humidity and no cloud cover made it even worse. I underestimated the toll the heat would take on me and made the mistake of keeping to my race plan. I started to peter out at 12km and at 14km I switched to walking and running. At 18km, the 2:30 pace bunny passed me and I was crushed. I ended up finishing at 2’44”. I’m not happy about the time and I’m pissed that I had to walk part of the course. Oh well, live and learn.

I’ve got friends and family who are encouraging me to do a marathon. My dad ran a lot of them in his day but I don’t know whether I’ll keep running. I’m still pretty sore and I woke up a few times last night with very painful leg cramps. As I am hobbling home from the finish, my non-athletic wife says to me: “One day, you need to make me understand why you do this to yourself.”