BMO Vancouver International Half Marathon Race Review

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Saturday:
On Saturday morning I met Nikki to head downtown and go to the Health, Sports, and Lifestyle Expo to pick up my bib and race package.

Solana, myself, and Nikki at the Expo

The expo was okay, I didn't love any of the race merchandise and ended up just buying some CEP compression sleeves that I've been waiting to buy for a while. After the expo we headed over to a blogger lunch that we had been arranging over the past week. Solana and Nikki had the opportunity to meet Bart Yasso at the Elite's lunch the day prior and invited him to our lunch as well! We were all very giddy with excitement when he accepted the invitation. If you don't know who he is you should definitely check out the link, he's a pretty inspirational and amazing guy. I still can't believe we were able to sit down and chat with him.

Afterwards we headed outside and took some pictures on a beautiful Vancouver day!

From Left to Right: Alanna, Solana, Nikki, Me, Leana

So with some extra inspiration from meeting all these other amazing bloggers and of course Bart Yasso I headed home to prepare for race day.

Sunday (Race Day):

I woke up not really feeling 100%. First off I got up late which is never a good feeling on race day. So I hurried to get myself together and get out the door. Thankfully there was no traffic (I didn't expect there would be at 5:00am but you never know) and I made it to downtown Vancouver in good time. I headed towards the nearest train station to get to the start line.

Riding the Canada Line to Queen Elizabeth Park

When I got there I was surprised about how far I had to walk to get to the bag check and start line but that was really my fault as I haven't really read into the details of a lot of the races I'm doing this year just because there are so many. Thankfully there was no line up and the bag check was easy, I can't believe after 13 half marathons I'd never checked a bag before. 

Next up, I looked at the rest room line up, there had to be at least 50 port-a-potties but it didn't matter the line ups were horrendous, it wasn't going to happen. So I nervously made my way towards my corral, as I was walking I ran into my other friends getting ready for the Marathon and Runner Leana who was also doing the half and in the same corral as me:

We hugged everyone gave our well wishes to the full marathoners and headed towards the pink corral! I still really had to pee and was starting to get nervous of it not going away during the race. I chalked it up to nerves knowing there was no way I would get through the line-up before race start. The corrals were a tad disorganized, there didn't really seem to be any division between them and there were clearly people moving up. We placed ourselves at the front of the pink corral as I was hoping for a 2:10 finish and the 2:15 pace bunnies were at the front as well. Considering Leana had listed a 2:05 as her predicted finish and I a 2:10 and we were both placed in the pink corral I think the pace bunnies should have been further back. The race is chip timed obviously so it really doesn't matter, but it is frustrating when things aren't organized well at such a BIG race.

The race started about 20 minutes late so I was certainly ready to go at that point. Leana and I wished each other well and headed off. It was nice to have a warm race start seeing as how all my other races this year started out freezing... I knew I wouldn't love it as much half way through but at the beginning I was definitely grateful.

After a short uphill section to get back onto Cambie st. we headed downhill for quite a while, I was feeling great despite still having to pee but every water station I passed that had a washroom was majorly lined up so I just kept going. I wasn't taking walk breaks and I was definitely going way too fast but I really didn't care because I was doing well according to my pace band. Before I knew it I was well past 7 km and in the heart of downtown. It was at this point I started reminiscing about all the Vancouver races I've done, we were just heading through Yaletown and down onto Pacific ave where I recalled the First Half which I really enjoyed earlier this year. Then we hit Beach ave and I knew the Seawall was coming, I love/hate the seawall because I had a really negative experience with it at the SeaWheeze Half last summer where I lost a lot of motivation, I still get nervous thinking about it. On the other hand it is a beautiful place to run!

Just before entering the park and the seawall.

I managed alright for the first while and then I saw a big water station at the 13km mark with lots of restrooms and regardless of the lineup I knew I had to stop, I was doing okay with the pace band so I thought it wouldn't be so bad, I was wrong... The lineup took much longer than I thought, I had that moment part way through where I wondered whether I should leave and just run but I was still kicking myself for doing that at the start line. As I exited the washroom feeling a lot better seeing that I wasn't going to pee my pants, the 2:15 pace bunny ran by. I felt pretty defeated but what was I going to do? I had to finish the race. Off I went no longer at a speedy pace I decided to just enjoy the beautiful weather and focus on finishing the race with a smile on my face.

As I reached the 15km mark, Leana caught up to me! I was so happy to see a familiar face at that point. She asked if I was alright and I explained what happened and we decided that we would run the rest together. We chatted a bit and I got back onto 10/1s, the walk breaks were very welcome at that point as it had gotten pretty hot. We only had about 4km left but I'll admit I was struggling, I don't fare well in the heat. Leana gave me a pep talk and I knew we were about to exit the park and then the finish line would feel so much closer.

It sounds so simple but I needed to hear it.

The finish chute for this race is extremely long, you probably think I'm just saying that because the last stretch always seems longer than it is but was several blocks long. On the other hand that meant there was more room for spectators which always helps when you need that extra motivation. We were trying to keep it under 2:20 so I knew we had to pick up a bit of a sprint at this point. We did our best but the heat definitely had both of us dragging. In the end we crossed that finish line together at 2:20:10.

I struggled with this race mentally. I was almost sure it would be a PR but we had an unseasonably warm weekend here in Vancouver and I've come to the point where I've realized with so many races in one year, not every one of them can be a PR and sometimes you just need to enjoy the ride.

We finished off our morning with some slurpees (a brilliant idea that struck me around kilometer 16)!

There's no Work It Out Wednesday this week as I'm still doing On Ramp CrossFit and my schedule doesn't return to normal until next week. My KT tape giveaway ends Friday!