The Running Diva

Saturday, June 21, 2008

[Paula, me and Nicole at the start-line of Emilie’s Run]

I woke up this morning bright and early…3:30am in west-coast time. Luckily I had a decent sleep. My legs still felt tender in spots but thankfully not as bad as it could have been (which confirms I didn’t run hard enough on Thursday). I accepted the fact though that this race was going to hurt more than usual with so little recovery between races. I spent the hour before the race preparing myself for a brutal run.

I met Nicole Stevenson as soon as I got to the Aviation Museum where the race start was. We started chatting right away and soon Paula Wiltse (fellow Masters runner) showed up with her family. It was nice to see a familiar face!

Nicole and I did the warm-up together. We ran easily along the course and at 8:15am it was already very hot and humid. My legs felt like blocks of wood when we started out but after 10 minutes or so, they got better with just some soreness along the sides of my upper legs. I did a few strides to try and get some spring-action happening. These felt ok so I was confident that I could nail down a decent time if I just buckled down and didn’t wimp out. I ran up to the overpass where the race was to start and was greeted by friendly smiles and hellos from a lot of happy faces. Women’s races are great!  Although I have only run a few all-women’s road races, I have to say they are my favorite races. I love that we all have a chance to actually finally LEAD a race or at least run at the front of the pack…very cool!

I ran this race as gutsy as I could. I tried to run the first few kms faster than on Thursday hoping I could make up for that error but that lasted about 2kms at which point my legs just started to get heavier by the second. I did my best but as I saw Paula pull away even though I was working like a maniac to get my turn-over back, it was all I could do to keep from stopping. Once I saw the results, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t have fresh legs for today’s race. The top three women ran right in the margin I would have been aiming for to run a PR. Nicole went out much too fast for me but I think I would have been able to hang close to Paula as she ran the race more evenly paced. I certainly want to run this race again. It was extremely well-organized to the last detail. The professional feel the race was due to Ken Parker and all the volunteers who oversaw all the details and made the event so amazing. I hope the race continues to grow and more west coast women can come out and take part. Thanks again Ken for everything. I am very thankful I had this incredible oppotunity!

I learned a lot running these two very different races so close together and can’t wait to chat to OCal about it all and get his feedback. He worked so hard at getting me ready and I feel a little like I let him down. Here are my thoughts: I think I didn’t run the track event hard enough and that is a regret. I was too cautious in the first few kms and that was a dumb move. I also think I have to learn to pull myself along on my own in those situations when I am alone and to learn to run more aggressively. I want to work on getting some smoothness and spring back into my running. I think with the tougher sessions, I have been struggling too much and my form has dropped a bit. The good points are that I was able to pull off two really strong performances less than 48 hours a part from each other. I jumped into a completely terrifying 5000m in front of a crowd and it was actually not as scary as I thought it would be and…well that’s all I have at the moment but give me a couple of days…

Here’s an article in Sunday’s Ottawa Citizen.