September 26 2004
Place: Toronto
Distance 21.1km
humidity factor 2/10
Temperature 12 C
Time: 8 am
What I ate the night before: Buffet City! Lotsa meat. Yes I am crazy
How I felt at the beginning tired as I woke up at 7am for an 8am race
What I wore, blue run tank, NB shorts, wright sock and Asics Nimbus V
What I ate prior to the run: Yogurt and banana
Running with Richard, Ken and Bettina
When the race started, I felt slightly apprehensive but determined to adhere to the same strategy utilised at the Montreal half 2 week earlier that led me to a 1:49:24 time. My strategy was to run 5:10 for the first 15 km, 5:00 for km 15-18 and 4:50 for km 18-21.1
I was able to weave through the crowd relatively easily. However at one point, as I was running under the Gardiner expressway, an indigent on his bicycle cut directly in front me causing me to lose my focus and stop. With 5000 runners on course, why in heaven's name would someone risk an accident like that? I'm not sure how I would have reacted had he crashed into me.
I found myself having such difficult time trying to adhere to the self prescribed game plan. My stress fracture was making itself known with each step and my pace was erratic; I was consistently running over and under the 5:10 pace. I felt my heart rate rise despite the easy pace I was maintaining.
At the 10km mark I was decided to throw caution to the wind. I had finally been able establish a proper rhythm and speed and decided push up the speed work. From that point the slowest I was running was 4:50s.
The weather was getting progressively warmer and what warmed the soul was seeing Fauja Singh run with his entourage. At 92 years young, he may have lost a step since his younger days but his conviction was never stronger. His image provided me with the ammunition to overcome my issues of the day (perhaps it was the bbq duck from Buffet City) and summon all the focus and marshall all the drive within me to run what proved to be a PR this day.
Thoughts of self doubt flooded my mind as I believed that I could not maintain any pace below 4:50. I continued to surge and with 6km to go, I no longer referred to my Garmin and it was a mad dash to the finish line.
With 3 km to go, I realised that I was going to shatter my old PB of 1:49 but the question that I was flirting with at the back of my mind was whether or not I would be able to capture the elusive time of 1:45? I kept on pushing and as I passed each runner, I felt stronger and more confident that today would be my day.
As I made the final turn off of Bay on to Wellington, the roar of the crowd was audible and I could see the float of balloons at the finish line. That further allowed me to propel myself into final kick (4:00 km) as I made a final attempt at that goal. As capricious as sport running is, today I was not to be denied:
836 1:47:20.7 5:06 1:45:29.2 6381 Wong, John Montreal 646/1883 76/208 Men 25 - 29 1:05:29 41:53
http://www.canadarunningseries.com/results/2004/stwm/scotiah.htm
Concerns: No more Buffet city (for that matter any) the night before. I think I can trace my poor performance in the first 10km to that
Need more sleep
stress fracture
I had to put in so much effort in the backstretch in order to compensate for the poor start that my body is completedly drained. I need to take it easy for the next several days for it to recover.
Final thoughts. Very fast course, good organisation (minus the vagrant on the bicycle) water and gatorade stations are good. Good friends and people. The warm thoughts and encouragement of a special someone back home have always helped.
I feel sad that this is the end of this blog. Turtleboy, we accomplished what we set out to do. Since it's establishment, this blog has allowed me to chronicle the trials and tribulations of my traiing towards this race. I hope that this will not be the last log that we will receive from you.
Stay tuned. Bonky will have launching his as well and we'll seek to answer the question: Are spin offs as good as the original?
ttyl, and congrats to everyone!
Bonky
