Goodlife Fitness Toronto Half Marathon results…

I finished the 21.1 km half marathon course in 1 hour, 39 min. — a new personal best!

Here are my stats:

• Overall place: 468
• Time 1:39
• Pace: 4:45/km
• Category: M 25-29
• Category Place: 392 / 2,340
• Gender Place: 58 / 319

The course for this race was excellent and I really enjoyed it. I found the downhill portions toward the beginning led me to go faster then I should of and left me feeling it in the second half. This is a good lesson for future races with a large downhill component early in the course. I may sound sadistic, but I loved the hills in this course, especially Hogs Hollow, and will likely build it into so long-distance leisure runs.

Coming up University Avenue I got two awesome surprises. The first (at Dundas Street) was my friend Kelly (pictured left) cheering me on at the top of her lungs! Kelly is awesome and her support helped me get through that last couple of kilometres! You can also see how freaking HUGE the medals are for the Toronto Half Marathon. I think if I hold it just so, I might get reception. They had a service on sight to engrave the back of the medals with your name and time, which was excellent – a nice keepsake for awesome memories!

My second surprise came when I was about 100 metres from the finish line. There on the sideline was my mom (pictured right), who drove in from Brooklin to see me finish! We’re sporting our mother and son sun shade look pretty well I think! It’s amazing what an energy  boost seeing these familiar and supportive faces at the end of a long hard race can do! For both the Scotiabank Waterfront and the Goodlife races, they helpled me get through that final 200 metres. John Stanton said in a talk I heard that those 200 meters is where you earn your medal. Outside of the uncountable hours of training it takes to prepare for races like this, I tend to agree.

Finally, the rockstar of today – without whom I probably wouldn’t be running at all, let alone have gotten to the starting line today – is my hubby Ken (pictured right). He’s my rock.

So now that the race season is finished, I’m taking a brief break from formal training (which is not to say I won’t be running). I’m off to the mountains of Mexico for two weeks starting on Oct. 26 and plan on doing some trail runs while there. I’m really interested in how the higher elevations will effect  my running, but am equally looking forward to some downtime with a pitcher (or three) of sangria. I’m planning on starting my formal marathon training for next season in December. I’ll keep the “upcoming races” page updated as things get firmed up for next year’s races. I’ll also try to get some more pictures posted to the race photos section over the next day or two. I hope to see the official race photos by the end of the week.

Ok – one final photo! This is near the start line at roughly 7:30 this morning. It was freezing cold at 0 degrees Celsius. We had just stripped down to our race gear and were trying hard not to jump up and down. Aestus is to my left and Thomas to my right — they coached me in my Learn to Run clinic last January at the Running Room at Commerce Court.

Great day. Great weather. Great course.