Priveleges......

… every once in a while I realize that being able to be competitive is a privilege. Having gone through enough injury frustrations and having my ‘prime’ running years done in by trying to simply be able to walk straight up makes me look at this sport different than I did when I had my early breakthroughs. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that to get the most out of the sport you can’t look at are they paying my entry fee or did I win some prize money (although don’t get me wrong those things certainly nice). In the end I do what I do because I live for that ‘high’ of simply being competitive.

The Sun Run on Sunday was one of those days. I only ran 30:10, while I figured I was in closer to 29:45 shape on that course (I hate that course and consider it quite tough even though the first km is downhill and the last 9km is as slow and difficult a course as you might find for a road 10km), but you can’t always have the races you want when you want (at least not at this time of the year). I didn’t have my best race or even a race where I felt I showed my current fitness, but being able to not pack it in and actually have a decent last 2km made some of the positives outweight the negatives. To be able to simply have the rush of trying to hang in there and then being able to catch guys is not a feeling that can be replaced. As I say ‘it’s not something you can buy…it’s something you can only earn’.

Race Report:

I knew there were two pretty good African runners (actually Kenyan), and also that Ryan Hayden is in pretty good shape, but other than that I knew little. I also knew that my mechanics were much better than the ½ marathon from two weeks previous. The question I had was whether I had done too much this week and had recovered enough. In the end I hadn’t fully absorbed the training, but recouped just enough to run decent.

Pretty much after 2kms we were down to the top three guys out on their own and the rest of us ‘cowardly’ Canadians running against each other. We weren’t running that fast which meant a big pack through the first 5km, and although I was relaxed I certainly didn’t feel smooth. Just around the 5km mark Dave Jackson and Derek Nagluski tried to break away up a nasty little hill (if you’ve done the Sun Run you know the hill), but the course was poorly marked and they kept going straight as opposed to right (Dave has run this course a few times so I was quite surprised when he did this). I was lucky as I was also pushing up the hill, but they were those 2-3 metres ahead and when I saw them go it was almost surreal. I saw the officials pointing for them to turn right and expected them to, but they never did. I felt bad for them and since I was leading the pack I slowed down the pace till they got back in the pack.

That’s one thing about most runners I like. We are cutthroat, but we like to win fair. Unfortunately, Dave never seemed to recover mentally from his detour. Derek on the other hand seemed almost more mtoivated as right around 6km him and Steve Mcintyre (guy who I haven’t seen in the results for a bit as he now lives in the US) began to push the pace (maybe I was slowing?).

Jim Finlayson and Jeremy Deere (just when you think those two have officially quit the sport they show up….^%$*^%$&...but then again i guess people say that about me) also broke away by about 30-40m and I was left with Ryan Day. I figured I was about to ‘go backwards’ when I slightly altered my stride and leaned forward (what did I have to lose I thought) and all of a sudden that smoothness I didn’t have for 7-7.5km was there for the first time in a long time.

Over the next km I was able to get back hold of Finn and Jeremy. I should have gone hard by them but tucked in for a bit and then with about a mile to go I made my run at Derek and Steve. Even with less than 600-800m to go I figured no way was I going to catch them, but then all of a sudden they cam back little by little. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch Steve, but I did get Derek and ended up 3rd Canuck and 5th overall. Not great, but not bad. At the very least I learned a few more things about what I need to do in my racing as I move on to some more marathon oriented sessions.