Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The 2007 Ottawa Marathon recap

We had a great time in Ottawa this weekend. The ride up was a blast, it was like we were in high school again. We left friday night stayed over in Belleville and then continued to Ottawa Saturday morning dropping a friend off and then heading straight for the expo to pick up our race packets and see if we could find any deals.
I finally bought some Injinji toe socks bUy the wAy those are like the best socks ever. I bought them,washed them in the sink and dried them by putting them in A/C register. They were great my ToEs are soooooo happy that I bought them.

The morning of the race was nice 52F/12C and really didn't seem to go much higher than that. The start was great I felt really strong. I felt like I was taking it easy but from what my garmin says I wasn't. The first 5miles were under 8min miles

After that I slowed down but had some good miles. There were a few times that I took in the scenery and maybe shouldn't have? At around the 37km mark I got a pretty bad cramp and did the run walk run walk thing. Overall pace was 8:55 minute mile. I probably could have shaved at least 10 minutes off of my overall time.

The end was great..what a feeling that is to have all those people cheering you on. My wife and her Sister were there from the start running around the course to catch a glimpse of us at different points. When I was done I left the finishers area to go meet up with Mike and ran the 500m with him again. I am really happy to have a sub 4 hour finish. My original goal was to beat 4 hours and that is what I did. I guess I can't really complain about taking 40 minutes off of my first marathon time.

What's next?

June 23rd I'm going to try to be an "ULTRA" marathoner. At the
NIAGARA Ultra 50 Km and Half Marathon(15th annual)
http://ouser.org/races/niag.htm

Then Try to take another 40 minutes off in Detroit and get my BQ.

http://www.detroitfreepressmarathon.com/

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