Today I ran the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon and PRed with a time of 1:35:43. I’m really happy, considering I missed a couple weeks a training due to falling off my bike and messing up my knee a bit. The race conditions were pretty ideal - about 11 degrees if I recall correctly.
I walked over to the start line and baggage check area from my apartment which was about a 30 minutes walk. I didn’t get a great warm up in as after I checked in my bag, I was waiting in a super long line for the porta-potties. By the time I finished, I didn’t have much time so I had to start heading to the start line. I got a light jog in for ~200 m from the porta-potties to the start line.
The first kilometer was a bit slow just due to congestion from so many people but otherwise, the race started off pretty well. Towards kilometer 5 I got a bit of a side stitch, but thankfully it went away after a while. As I got to around the 10 km mark, I really wasn’t sure if I could maintain my pace for another 11.1 km. My legs were feeling pretty tired and my breath was starting to become more frantic. I focused on making sure I didn’t drop my pace much and after a few kilometers I started to feel good again.
With about 1 km left I started a last push and picked up my pace but couldn’t sustain it all the way to the end - so I ended up going back to my regular pace for the last 500 m or so.
The crowds definitely helped. Running along the sections of the course that had lots of people cheering and shouting was really fun. I hope I can come back one day and run the Toronto Waterfront Marathon again!
I was planning on trying to run from Toronto to Niagara Falls in a few weeks. The overall distance is about 130 km. I’m planning on spreading it out over a few days. Hopefully it’s not too soon and everything works out okay!
Written on October 20th, 2019 by zhangyt3