BMO Fools Run Race Review

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Wow I am tired! This morning I got up at 5:00AM and we were out the door headed to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal by about 5:45AM. I was so glad my husband, Cody, decided to come along at the last minute so I didn't have to drive so early in the morning plus it was great to have some company for the journey! I made sure to download "Running the Sahara" to the iPad last night so that we'd have something to watch on the Ferry. We both didn't sleep great last night so I brought a pillow too and even though Cody had been at my soon to be brother-in-law's bachelor party till 12:30AM the night before, we were both too into the documentary to go to sleep. I highly recommend watching this, especially the night before a race, great inspiration! I can't even fathom running 2 Marathons a day for 111 days through the Sahara Desert...

As a side note, my friend Nikki from Slow is the New Fast will actually get the chance to run with Ray Zahab (featured in the documentary) in May at the Run for Water Ultra Marathon, so cool!

Once we arrived in Gibson's it didn't take long to get to the community center where the race start line was, in fact we ended up being over an hour early. I felt really ready for this race despite all the hills I was seeing on the way there.

I headed into the community center to use the washroom, it wasn't too crowded which was nice. The race was very well organized for being so small. Because it was such a small race there was no starting mat, so the time was based on gun time. We started the race up an incline but it was short lived (thank goodness). Immediately after starting I realized something wasn't quite right with my right ankle/lower calf, everything was feeling very tight and became quite a bit more painful as the race continued.

I was starting to worry how I would even finish the race. I struggled through the first 8km of steep hills, it was pretty rough and then we finally leveled out and my ankle pain eased off slightly, enough that I knew I could fight through the pain.

We were now down by the water and I knew at some point we'd have to go back up again so I buckled down and decided I was getting a PR one way or another. Just at that moment I noticed this sign and actually laughed out loud:

NO! I will not slow down! Eventually we had to make our way back up the hills, and I did but I had to slow down quite a bit and by the time I got to the top we had caught up with the walkers that had an earlier start than we did. I have to say this was the most frustrating part of the race, I knew I was only a few km from the finish but I couldn't go anywhere. We were on a highway and they couldn't close the road so we were confined to the narrow shoulder, I tried to pass several walkers but some of them just wouldn't get out of the way. I found this disappointing, I imagine at that point they were probably quite frustrated with people trying to pass them but still... Needless to say I think I could have made up some more time there. In the end, I got a PR anyway, the results show 02:14:14, but remember there was no starting mat and I started at least 30 secs after the gun went off.

It was quite the race to the ferry after the run, we made it there two minutes before they closed the gate. Because of this I have no idea what the post race festivities and food were like, I pretty much went from the finish line to the car because if we had missed the ferry we would have had to wait two hours.

I made sure to put on my compression socks on the ferry, wow did it ever feel good to put on clean clothes!

I also made sure to grab some chocolate milk, mmm!

And of course pose for a few photos:

This is a short race report because I don't have much to say other than I'm thankful it didn't rain, there were a lot of hills, and I'm happy with my shiny new PR! My goal for the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon is now 2:10 or under.

13 Half Marathons Complete (overall)
7/17 Complete (for 2013)