Race report: Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon

October 15, 2012

So I ran my second marathon yesterday. (I just ran the Goodlife Toronto Marathon in the spring, you may recall.)

I don’t know what other people think about when they run marathons, but here’s a snippet of my internal monologue yesterday:

“This is going to be pure MISERY. OK, snap out of it, you’re never going to make it through four hours of this if you’re thinking that now.” (my thoughts as I stood huddled out of the pouring rain, dressed in a tres sexy garbage bag, killing time until I got into my corral.)

“Your one job today: stick to the four-hour pace bunny.”

“You &@&#*#ers!” (as I jealously watched the half marathoners split off from us to their finish line)

“So maybe I can just run the half, and then talk to the organizers and say I changed my mind on what race I was running? Will that work?”

“OK, well, I can’t do that  job anymore, so I just gotta do what I can.” (just after the halfway mark, when I couldn’t keep up with the 4-hour pace bunny anymore)

“OK, it’s just two 10k runs left. You can do 10k in your sleep.” (I was ignoring the extra 2.2k after that)

“Is this because of all the eating and drinking I did in Europe last week?” (when I was feeling sluggish)

“Look at my nails. Pretty! And you didn’t get this kickass manicure for nothin’, now didja? Keep going…”

“I think I must be losing my mind and that’s a mirage, cuz that sure looks like Serena, OMG IT IS SERENA!!!” (thrilled at the 36k mark that my friend surprised me by coming out to cheer. It was a dark, tough road after 30k so it was a huge boost to see her)

“I’ll have to ask someone to smack some sense into me when I consider running one in spring 2013, or maybe even ever again.”

“Just another four kilometres until I see Lindsay and Scott. I never run less than 6k so it’ll be nothing til I get to the 41k mark and see them…”

“Whee! There’s Lindsay and Scott!”

“That sign says 500 metres to go….wow, 500 metres is waaaaay longer than I ever realized….I want to stop running already….”

“I see the finish line, fiiiiiinaalllly — sprint sprint sprint!!!!!”

“That wasn’t so bad. Should I train for a spring marathon?”

All in all a good race. I didn’t ask friends to come cheer — I figure (and I’ve talked to other runners about it) if they don’t run, they probably don’t particularly care or get it. So I didn’t have that to help boost me along the way — it can make a big difference, I think, so go out and cheer your running friends if you have ‘em. That said, I was so focused on sticking with my pace bunny that the first half flew by and I couldn’t even tell you what neighbourhoods we ran through.

Other than that, mentally, I found a bit easier to wrap my head around since I’d already done one marathon and had more long training runs completed. Physically, probably about equally difficult. Looking at my splits, it was after the 30k mark that things really started to fall apart speedwise.

My time: 4:20. Not a personal best, but that’s OK, I’m happy with that time and that I’ve got marathon #2 under my belt.

Filed under: Fitness Swellness,Healthy Swellness

Tags: marathon, marathon manicure, race report, running, Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon