Valdir's races

I got my "personal worst", I ran the 42.2 km in 5h41m51s. Horrible! The first half was ok, I was going at my marathon pace (seven minutes per kilometer) but in the second half I had to walk long stretches, I was feeling sick and my pace slowed down to nine minutes per kilometer. My daughter met me around km 34 and stayed with me for a kilometer or so. The idea was that she would jog with me to the end, but that was only if I had a shot at sub-5. As I had already blown out that possibility, I told her to go back home. The last few kilometers were murderous, I couldn't run anymore, the best I could manage was a semblance of rapid walking. At the end I got my medal, my jacket, I drank a beer and ate corn on the cob. I was mad at myself for my result. I had trained so much, I deserved a better time.

3K rapid walk On September 14th, 2016, a Wednesday, I took the day off from work to take part in the provincial finals of the Jeux FADOQ in Lévis, QC . Unfortunately my wife could not be there with me due to her work, so I did the trip all by myself. It rained on and off all day long, it was a bad day to be outside walking and running. A little after 11 am we finally did the 3K rapid walking. We were eight competitors at the start line, six men and two women. When we started the race, one of the participants started jogging and, of course, got a huge advantage over us who were doing the rapid walking. He was disqualified by the organizers after his first lap. With him out of the way, I was in second place, right behind the leader. My goal was to keep with him as long as possible and if I still had some gas left at the end I would try to overcome him. But unfortunately he started jogging when we were far from the organizers. He got a good advantage over me, there was no