Hypothermic Half

So I have just finished my first official Half Marathon (21.1k). Official in the sense that I actually trained hard for this. This race was called the Hypothermic Half. From the picture, you can see why it is called that. It wasn't too cold of a day for the end of January and the sun may have popped out once or twice but I didn't really notice. I was pretty focused on my race. I had my music going and my Garmin by my side helping me along.


There was one little problem with my music which took a little while to fix. I started the race listening to it and after a while I noticed I was listening to the same song over and over again. Apparently I had it set up to repeat one song rather than the whole playlist, so once I got that sorted out everything else went quite smoothly.


This race is not one of the most exciting ones to run since it is a lap kind where I ran the same area about 4 times, seeing and smelling the same things over and over. It took place at the Central Experimental Farm. So you could definitely smell the farm many times especially as the wind blew your way. The only good thing about running the many laps is that I was able to cheer on the other runners from my group as I passed them as they did for me. It always feels good when you hear someone giving you those words of encouragement, and it is probably what helped me get through the race. I am proud to say that I finished the race with a personal best time of 1:52:50


I have started already training for the next big race of Ottawa the ING Half Marathon in May, it is one of the biggest events here in Ottawa as a lot of the racers who run the full Marathon run it to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I am very excited to participate in it this year. Last year I ran a 10k but I feel I am ready for the Half and maybe next year I will finally attempt a full Marathon as well (not necessarily for the Boston though). Training for this has me being a group leader with the Running Room. We started last Thursday and hopefully I will have more in my pace group this week but if not that will be ok too.