A Midsummer Night's Run....er walk

I ran the 30K Midsummer Night's Run on Saturday night...well most of it anyway. That was the race from hell! I ran 5K on Friday night and my legs were really, really heavy. That coupled with the fact that I had raced a 1/2 marathon the previous Sunday, should have been enough to tell me to go easy on Saturday night and use the race as a training run (which is what I did last year). I was also thirsty at the start of the race, which is not a good sign. It was hot and humid and everything "should" have told me this would not be a great race. Not only did I want to run a PB, I went out too fast. Before I realized it I was about 30 seconds/km too fast and couldn't slow it down. I did have the plan before I started though, that I would give it 5K and if things weren't working out then I'd slow down and finish as a training run. Well I gave it until 7.5K and was done! I felt horrible. Legs were heavy, I was tired and desperately looking for a way to bail out. Yes I was trying to find a way to DNF. I wasn't even sure I could run the distance at all.

I spent quite a long time during the race trying to figure out how to do this. Here were some of my ideas:

- Turn down the street where the finish line was and just stop. Unfortunately missed the street.

- Just turn around at any point around the 8K mark and go back to the finish.

- Contemplated asking a police officer in a car for a ride back.

- Out on the spit, considered taking my bib off, throwing it in a bush and turning around with the runners already heading back. (Taking the bib off was so that people didn't think I was cheating...I would just look like a runner out for a run).

There were more, that was just a few.

I met up with a woman who felt as bad as me and we did a lot of the race together. Walked and ran and shared our misery! Thanks Debbie! It was great to have the company. I also spoke to another runner, a man, at around 28K who was also saying the same thing, how unusually awful he felt. I think that it was a tough night and a lot of people were feeling the same. Some were able to push through better and there were a few PB's to be had. Congrats to all runners, that was one tough run!

Here are my results:

Chip Time: 3:06:03
Finish 514/834 overall
Women 40-49 59/128
Females 213/432

The distance was short of 30K (I measured 29.41K).

Here are some photos from the race...you can see quite of few of me "walking". There's one with the CN Tower in the background which is nice. The finish line photos are great as well....(not)

http://www.zoomphoto.ca/eventgallerysearch/15365/186/1/



Great lessons learned and sometimes that's more valuable. I've had some good races this summer and perhaps was getting a little to over confident. This was definitely a good wake up call. I don't want to do this during October's marathon so valuable lesson learned indeed.

The medals were the same as last year (which was Act V). All they did was change the ribbon. I was a bit surprised by that. They should have made last year's medals with no Act V designation then no one would have known.