Fitness Swellness: Reggae Half-Marathon Race Recap

December 22, 2023

When I ran almost-a-PB at the TCS Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon mid-October, I considered my racing done for the year. I planned to take a week off then start up again just to maintain fitness with 3-4 short runs a week.

And then a day or two after the race, I got an invite to run the Reggae Marathon in Negril — which has a half-marathon or 10k distance.

Who can turn down an opportunity to visit beautiful Jamaica?! So I decided to go and figured if I took a week off to recover, that would still leave me with about five weeks to train.

Then, I caught a cold, which lasted a little over a week so I didn’t train. And my training got further derailed by some consistent travel: I went to Montreal for four days (saw Pink in concert — what a show!). A trip to St. Kitts got cancelled last minute, but I ended up going to Niagara Falls for the weekend to see Nick Carter in concert. I got busy working on one project and then went to Punta Cana for five days (I managed to fit in one treadmill run while there).

I also fit in a press trip to Kananaskis, Alberta, with My Fitness Pal. You may know that the Canadian Rockies is my happy place so even though my schedule is a bit nutty, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. That trip was quite short and I had no extra space in my carryon and I didn’t bring running shoes at all for that trip.

All this to say my running was very sporadic. With the time change and the sun setting so early (and not being a fan of running after dark), I haven’t yet been successful with shifting my schedule to fit in my runs midday. I also caught a minor cold after returning from Punta Cana. Feeling rundown, I shortened one of my longer runs from 15k to 12k and shortened my last long run from 18k to 15k. And I didn’t bother to do a shakeout run the day prior to the race because I figured it wouldn’t be making or breaking my race.

While I never planned to fully race the Reggae Half (I know how much the heat and humidity would make racing difficult), I did plan to run a decent time. But with the lack of consistent training, my new plan was to run comfortably. I did set broad goals, though. My A goal was to run between 2 hours and 2:15; my B goal was to run between 2:15 and 2:30 — and based on the weather, I thought it’d likely be the latter that I could acheive.

The day prior to the race, we had some activities–nothing strenuous but more active than I would be if I were at home. Then we hurried to the press conference for the race, which was held at 7 p,m. Not ideal timing–I’d like to have been eating dinner by then. By the time we got back to the Royalton Negril and went to the buffet (which we figured was the fastest option), it was 8 p.m.

I got back to my room at 9 p.m. and prepared my gear and was in bed by 10 p.m.

My alarm went off at 3 a.m. and I ate two little buns I’d taken from the buffet and an iced latte I’d saved from the cafe the night prior. We met in the lobby for just prior to 4 a.m. and heading down the road about 2km by van to the start.

 

At the start, there’s some fun things in the works pre-race: they light up torches that line each side of the starting chute; there was a guy (maybe a rasta?) on stilts, and everyone seemed just happy to be there. I didn’t have my usual stress since my plan was to run comfortably.

The race started at 5:15 a.m. sharp and it was about an hour before sunrise. So the first half is in the dark; kept reminding myself to look for potholes. It, thankfully, wasn’t excruciatingly hot and humid yet.

While there was reggae blasting from speakers at every mile (I swear there seemed to be less reggae in the second half of the race, though). I was glad that I had decided to take my AirPods with me. With the very early start, there are extremely few people cheering along the route — and I always need as much distraction as possible, so I was grateful to have my running playlist to keep me going.

The water and Gatorade on the route is in sealed bags. I was wearing my fuel belt so I never grabbed one although I did mean to try it out — they reminded me of the sippy sacs I’d get at the corner store as a kid after going to swim at the YMCA, I think they cost 10 cents.

I maintained my comfortable pace and for the first half my pace was anywhere from 5:52/km to 5:58/km and in the second half it slowed slightly to just over 6:00/km. As I ran, I was thinking I was on track to reach my A goal, and was happy about it. And in a brief moment of confusion (I blame the lack of sleep), I was was disappointed when I realized I was finishing closer to 7:30–I mistakenly thought we had started the race at 5 a.m. and didn’t understand for a minute why I wasn’t reaching my A goal based on my pace. Then I remembered the actual 5:15 gun time.

I picked up the pace a little bit in the final kilometre. I knew I’d done pretty decently for the runners that day–the route is a loop so I was able to see how many women were ahead of me and I hadn’t seen that many.

I crossed the finish line with the clock showing 2:11 and change and was pleased with my easy, comfortable pace completed with inconsistent training the past five weeks. After I crossed the finish line, I took a photo by the step-and-repeat, got my Red Stripe and headed to the beach to drink my beer and take a dip in the lake. I found the other media running the race and got a fresh coconut to sip and changed into flip flops as I enjoyed the reggae playing at the post-run fete and at about 8:30 we got back into the van to head back to the resort to shower.

But before we left, we checked the printouts of the results. I finished in 2:11:01, and was the 6th in my age category.

6th? That sounded pretty great to me, but it being such a small race, maybe there were only 6 women in my category!

My time didn’t really make sense to me given that the time on my Apple Watch Ultra was shorter. When I got online and looked up the results, I realized the posted results are gun time. For my actual results (chip time), I finished in 2:09:36, 123rd out of 299 half-marathon finishers, 32nd out of 144 women, and 6th out of 18 women in my category. Small playing field, but hey, more than six women in my category, haha!

If you’re wondering how small the race is, it’s typically capped at 3,000 runners for all events; this year, 299 runners finished the half and 911 ran the 10k. But more participants are expected for 2024–I share more about the race in my post up on irun.ca on 7 Reasons to Run a Reggae Marathon.

The race was fun–I wouldn’t say it’s the most beautiful race (the views are primarily of the entrances to resorts along the road, although you do catch some ocean views here and there in the second half of the race) but you can soak up all of Jamaica’s beauty after the race. Having done several Caribbean races now, I love the tradition of finishing the race and being able to be on a beach immediately after crossing the finish line to cool off in the sea and kick back on the beach. And can every race end with a Red Stripe and a fresh coconut, slashed open on the spot?

it was nice to not be super stressed about time, and it’s still kind of crazy to me that I was able to run for 2+ hours straight comfortably without a single walk break. And the beauty of small races is that you could potentially podium (not something ever within reach for me in my usual races). If I could’ve run the same time I ran in the Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, I’d have podiumed in 3rd place for my category here at the Reggae Half…

…which is making me think I should train properly and have another go at this race next year! Ya, mon!

 

Filed under: Fitness Swellness