Fitness Swellness: 2019 Global Energy Race recap

September 24, 2019

This Sunday, I ran the Dempster’s Global Energy Race (GER) for the third year in a row and as always, I had so much fun, and managed to run a GER 10k PB!

My race plan

I went into it planning to run it as comfortably hard a pace that I thought I could maintain for 10k. I don’t enjoy that feeling of my heart feeling like it’s going to explode, and my focus is training for the Detroit Marathon and Istanbul Marathon so my plan was to run it fast but not so fast that I felt too awful. I knew going into the race that I’d have run 29k on Friday as per my marathon training schedule, and my legs would be tired (and they were). So the plan was always to run it with some effort, but not full out. This race is so family-friendly and chilled out, I was really more keen on just having a fun morning with my friends there and running a decent time.

Hello, race day!

The route, from memory, was slightly different this year; they shortened the part of the route in the “peanut” (I used to run in the Beaches and this is what the curvy path in Ashbridges Bay was nicknamed thanks to the shape of the route if looking at it from above) and instead they extended the route going out east and back along the path and boardwalk to the start/finish line. As for the weather, would you believe I didn’t check the temp? That’s how relaxed I was about this race. It was overcast and probably in the high 20s if you factored in the humidity (I didn’t check the weather in the morning but in the late afternoon, it was 32C with the humidity) and we had some drizzle for maybe 10 minutes of the race, which was a nice cool relief from the heat.

What was my finish time?

I did not run a 10k PB, but I wasn’t aiming for one as I mentioned above. I’m realistic. I know I’m not as fit as I was in 2015 (which remains my 10k PB). My focus is my two fall marathons. While I didn’t reach the goal I had in mind (which was a sub-50 min) but I did finish 9 seconds faster than last year, even with the warmer conditions. (As an aside, I don’t think I can even really ever factor in my 2017 GER race as that day was ridiculously hot and humid on top of the fact, I was extremely under the weather with a cold.)

Even with what I consider a modest time of 50:10, that time ranks me 14th women to finish out of 263, and 61st out of 528 runners in the 10k race. And I’m happy enough with that.

The Global Energy Race is perhaps one of the best stocked in terms of food: hot dogs, burgers, apples, oranges, coffee, ice cream, chips, granola bars. I devoured a Klondike ice cream cone and drank some coffee as we watched the race winners hit the stage (congrats Brittany Moran!) and the 3k race start. If you’ve got kids, the 3k race is a great race in which you can run or walk together, plus there are loads of lawn games to entertain the kiddos pre- and post-race.

After the race, my friends and I went straight to brunch to celebrate our morning well spent: we’d run 10k and in the process, helped in a great cause: for every kilometre completed, Dempster’s will be donating two slices of bread to the North York Harvest Food Bank.

Thank you Dempster’s for the opportunity to help promote this race and cause (I did partner with Dempster’s on this sponsored blog post promoting the race ICYMI). The race has become an annual tradition I look forward to!

Now, back to marathon training, it’s peak training week!

Filed under: Fitness Swellness

Tags: #runwithus, 10k, Dempster's, Global Energy Race, running