Sunday morning, we got up at 4:30am to leave for my race in Quebec City. We were out the door by 5, as planned, and we got to downtown Quebec in good time, around 7 or so. I was anticipating having difficulty finding a spot to park the car but Chris spotted an opening on a street right near the race site and it was free to boot. When we first arrived, the weather was kinda gross, drizzly, damp and humid. There were almost 1400 participants in the event, 800+ for the 11km and ~550 for the 16km. Because there were so many people and given the nature of the race (ie. with staircases), they decided to do a staggered start, with 6 people starting every 10 seconds. The 16km competitors got to go first, with the walkers starting before the runners. Then the 11km walkers went and then us. The first people got on the course right at 8am, but it was about 9 before I finally started and there were still tons of people behind me. The start was really slow and disorganized, but overall the race was fairly well run.
Once we got going, it was a great race. I think it's one of my best races of all time. The rain stopped and the temperature was pretty much perfect. There was no sun because of the heavy cloud cover and aside from being a touch humid, I have no complaints. The first 2km didn't have any stairs so I kept up a great pace. I decided to walk up the stairs rather than run for a number of reasons. First, congestion - with so many people on the course, it was difficult to move quickly and even more difficult to pass. Second, safety - because of all the rain overnight, the wooden stairs were extremely slippery. And third, fatigue - I didn't want to kill myself running up the first few flights of stairs and then not have anything left at the end. All in all, it was a pretty good strategy. I moved fairly quickly down the stairs and I ran at a quick pace anytime I wasn't on the stairs. The only time I walked was up an extremely steep (but short) hill. I passed a lot of people over the course of the race; I don't know how many of them were walkers, but I don't care.
In total, there were about 2000 steps spread out over ~20 staircases. The last one was the worst - a 300 step ascent on the Promenade des Gouverneurs. I thought it was never going to end. When I finally got to the top, there was only 1km left so I decided to give it everything I had. I kept checking the distance on my Garmin, increasing my pace every 100m. This backfired slightly as it turns out the course was 11.4km not 11.0, but nevertheless my finish was strong. In the end, I finished in a time of 1:24:14 which was over 5min faster than the average time. I finished 397/817 overall, 162/443 in my gender and 61/107 in my age group. I am extremely pleased with my results and I got a cool medal for finishing.
Immediately after my race finished, we hopped in the car to continue to Maine. We were out of Quebec City by 11am and we made it to Goose Rocks Beach at around 5pm. There was no line-up at the border and we crossed without any difficulty. We stopped at a McDonald's along the way to get some food and I was pretty gross-looking. I had changed in the car just before we left, but I was certainly not at my finest. So, I decided to wear my medal in the restaurant as justification for my grossness. As we were walking across the parking lot, I made some comment about us finally being able to speak English (and how we can't use it as a code anymore). While Chris was ordering the food, I went into the washroom and waited in line behind some other ladies. Wouldn't you know it but the three ladies saw my medal and asked me about it, in French (it says Défi des Escaliers on it). Here I was all excited to speak in English in the US and I ended up telling them about the race in French. I thought it was a little amusing anyways. The rest of the drive was uneventful but man were we exhausted when we arrived. The first thing I did was jump in the shower, then I washed my race clothes and took a short nap.
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