26.2 (Ottawa Marathon Race Report)

I did it! I finished my first marathon today! I woke up at 4:30, had some leftover pasta for breakfast and we were ready to go by 5:30. I'm staying with Chris' aunt and uncle, who live in Ottawa, and they were kind enough to drive me to the race site so I wouldn't have to worry about parking or getting lost. I was extremely appreciative because downtown Ottawa can be a bit overwhelming if you don't know where you're going, especially with all the street closures.

I arrived at the race site just before 6:00 so I had about an hour to kill before the race start. I was wearing a tank top and shorts and I found it a bit chilly at that time of the morning, but thankfully there was a building nearby where we could wait. At around 6:30, I called my grandmother because I was getting a little freaked out (and she's the only one I know who's guaranteed to be up at that time).

Around 6:45, I made my way to the purple corral (4:30-5:00 finishers) and shortly thereafter, they sang the national anthem. The wheelchair marathon started at 6:55 and then all of a sudden we were off. It only took about 3 minutes or so for me to cross the start line, despite how far back I was. Within the first couple minutes, I had to stop and readjust my hydration belt. Despite my best efforts to get it right before the start, it kept flopping around too much. The adjustment mechanism is not very good and as a result, I'm not a fan of this new 4-bottle belt (also, the bottles sometimes fly out - happened 4 times during the race). I think I lost about a minute here.

My goal pace for the race was 11:00/mile and I managed to hit that for the first 18 miles or so. At mile 5, I went through a water station and did something kinda stupid. In addition to the Gatorade I took, I grabbed a cup of water to dump down my shirt. However, I forgot that I was wearing my iPod and I killed it! At that point I was thinking that it was going a long race without music...

Thankfully, there were about a dozen or so bands spread out over the course, including one drum corps that was awesome. There were also lots of spectators in the first half as well as some amusing signs. For example, there was a little kid dancing on a corner while singing over and over again, "I like to move it, move it." Shortly thereafter, I had to make a pit stop at around mile 9 because my stomach was cramping up to the point where I was doubled-over in pain. Even though I lost just under 2 minutes there, it was definitely worth it.

After a few miles without music, I was getting pretty fed up with the whole thing; the race just seemed like such a chore. But then genius struck! I was carrying my iPhone with me (so Chris could track me from home) and what does my iPhone have lots of? Music!! So I unplugged the headphones from my dead iPod and plugged them into the phone. Brilliant! I had music again! That gave me a good mental boost and my pace picked back up a bit.

After that, there's not too much to report. The miles chugged by and I was slowly getting more and more tired. The temperature was also heating up so it made it more challenging to keep pace. Once I hit 20 miles, I seemed to lose a lot of steam. Most of my miles were still 11:XX but at the higher end. Unfortunately, this was beginning to jeopardize my hope of finishing under 5:00:00.

The last few miles were pretty awesome because of all the spectators that had gathered in the downtown. Despite the fact that everything hurt, I wasn't going to give up when the end was so close. One particular song came on that gave me a little extra boost, Colonel Hathi's March (the elephant march from Disney's The Jungle Book). I have no clue why but it seemed to do the trick, so I listened to it 3 times before moving on.

I finally made it to the home stretch and Chris' aunt and uncle were waiting near the finish line to cheer me on. Normally, I sprint the last 100m or so to the finish line but not today. My final time: 4:59:14. I just barely squeaked in under 5:00:00 and I'm so glad I did. (I'd have been really annoyed if my time had been something like 5:00:16.) Here's the link to my Garmin data. (It doesn't match my chip time because I forgot to turn off the auto-pause feature and the timer stopped when I stopped to adjust my belt at the beginning.)

And here's me post-race with my medal:

So will I do it again? If you asked me today, I'd probably say no. But I've been told that the pain fades, much like a woman forgets how painful childbirth was. We'll how things go in the next couple months but I'm not ruling it out entirely.