2019 Canada Day Road Race
Race Report
As most of you know this race was somewhat of a milestone for me. A year ago amidst a heat and humidex advisory and a fresh diagnosis of Atrial Fibrillation I had to ask the doctors to let me walk the 5K. It was a humbling experience and it's hard to imagine that the journey I went on from that point to where I am today.
I'm grateful to those that have supported me along the way and it's been tough some days, but the one constant is my motivation to move forward and keeping plugging away.
Also the day before the race I volunteered with Run Ottawa at the Stittsville Bushtukah to hand out bibs. Shona, Helen, Ron, Arij and myself had the pleasure of greeting runners. I think there were more kids running than adults. 😄
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| A break in the race kit pickup for a group selfie |
I dragged my oldest ML to take photos as the usual official/unofficial photographer was running and wondering if I could take some, but it seemed we were both in the 10K so I said let me see if I can convince someone to do some photos. 😉😉 and she did great. She took 90% of the photos and I took over for the tot trot and the 1K.
Photos I took are here
So for 2019 not only did I want to run I also wanted to go for the 10K. Doing 5K is fine, but I was on a mission...redemption as I call it as I had something to prove. I know I'm no longer fast as I'm still not really allowed to push my heart beyond my current threshold. For now I'm in turtle mode and treated the 10K as an LSD (Long Slow Distance) pace. Mind you my first km was a bit speedy. I was at a 6:31/km pace in the first bit and my Garmin was screaming at me. So it took another 2K before I settled into my groove. It was my first time back in the old course. From what I told we ran it backwards so it was nice to tour around Kanata Lakes as there was plenty of shade and the organizers had misters out which was helpful at certain stages.
I ran with an older gentleman and as we were approaching the 2Kish mark we can hear the heavy panting of the 5K folks making their move to place in the top 3. They were flying! We both joked that there wasn't anyone our age that was running at our pace in the lead group.
Once we hit the split where the 10K went straight and the 5K turned the corner we went up towards Kanata Avenue where we hit some elevation here and there.
For the most part my Garmin was pretty quiet and I stayed within my Z3 threshold for HR. Pace wise I was pretty conservative in the first 5K, but then I started picking up my pace again in the 2nd half. Since I had not run this course before the last 1K was tricky as it was getting to the point where there was one final hill that surprised a lot of us since it was the first time. I got a video from an IG follower whose wife was filming and just happen to hear my name so she caught a clip of me finishing.
Thanks Marie (IG:marielosesit_again) and Sara for the video.
It was a great race and well organized. It's a Canada Day tradition so far. I've done this 3 years in a row now.
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| Blinged |
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| 10K done 1:10 |
Eagle's Nest Lookout
So what does one do when you finish a 10K race? Well you drag your voluntold photographer out to Calabogie for a hike.
It was a pretty simple hike unlike Luskville Falls, but enjoyable. Also very humid. Lucky for us there was shade, but as well we managed to get in just over 4K of hiking and some elevation which was not bad at all.
1.5k from the highway and to the sacred grounds.
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| Eagle's Nest Lookout |
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| this frogger was looking for some snacks |
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| ML checking out the views |
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| Done! |
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| Framing skills |
The rest of Canada Day was a lot of RnR! Hope you had a good one!
