Ottawa Marathon 2019

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Ottawa Marathon

The day before

My daughter recently moved to Ontario to work in a nuclear plant in Chalk River, 200 km north of Ottawa, so we had agreed that we would meet in our nation's capital during the weekend of the races to celebrate her 31st birthday.

My wife and I arrived shortly after 9 am in our hotel and went to its restaurant, where our daughter was already waiting for us.

We had a very nice breakfast with her, she told us stories of her new job and her new home. 

After breakfast we went to the race expo to get my bib. We spent very little time at the expo, because my daughter had to go take her car to continue her trip to Montreal, where she would be attending a wedding.

After she was gone we did the check-in and to our surprise we got the room right away! Yay! And it was a very good room:

We left our stuff in the room and went to the Canadian Museum of History (formerly known as Canadian Museum of Civilization) to visit the special exhibition on Neanderthals:

We loved the exhibition, spent the rest of the day in the museum, it was a lovely way to spend the day before the race.

When the museum closed we went back to Ontario (the museum  is in Hull, Quebec, just across the bridge) and looked for a place to eat. We found the Courtyard Restaurant, where we ate a marvelous gnocchi (I needed my pasta before the race).

Race day

I woke up at 2h40, but fortunately was able to go back to sleep. I woke up again at 5h10, twenty minutes before my scheduled wake-up call.

I got ready for the race, put on the t-shirt, the bib on the t-shirt, re-checked all my race stuff and shortly after 6h30 we were leaving the hotel to get to the start line.

My wife took a picture of me at my corral:

Then she went to the front to try and get a picture of me at the start.

We listened to our national anthem sung by a girl from an Ottawa choir and shortly after 7 am we started moving.

My wife couldn't get a proper spot, so the picture at the start line didn't come up too well.

After the start she went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibition on Gauguin:

I had promised myself that I would not pass the 4h15 bunny, but right in the first kilometer I couldn't see him anymore for a while and then I spotted what I believed was him up a head but I couldn't make up the numbers on his little banner. I thought it was 4h15, but when I got closer, I saw that it was 4h10! Oh well... I stayed with him for the longest time.

The first 19 km were all fantastic, I was keeping an average of 5m48s per km, I was quite happy with my performance. But then, during km 20 I felt a sharp pain on my left side, I had to stop and walk for 200m or so.

When I resumed there was no more pain, so I have no idea what that was. But during km 21 I decided to walk a bit just to get my first half in 2h06m or so. The bunnies for 4h15 and 4h20 passed me during this time I was walking, but I was not concerned, I knew I could catch up with them shortly after I resumed running.

How wrong I was! After the midway point I was never able to run a kilometer in less than six minutes, so those guys were all the time putting some distance on me.

By km 25 I was feeling a sharp pain in my left foot, I was sure I had the most gigantic blister developing there. This pain stayed with me for the rest of the race and hindered my efforts to run.

From there on I had to stop many times to rest a bit. By km 33 the 4h30 passed me and now my goal was just to not allow the 4h45 bunny to overtake me. And even this was hard, I couldn't properly run because of the blister in my left foot.

And the weather didn't help either. The day had started a bit cold, which is very good for running, but by the mid point it was already a bit too warm for my taste.

The last few kilometers were just a limping ahead. By km 40 I saw the 4h45 bunny closing in on me, I put all my effort in those last two kilometers and was able to finish ahead of him. But, as I had started in front of him, my official time was 4h45m14s. Oh well, we live to fight another day...

After the race I went back to the hotel and by one of these great coincidences I got there at the same time my wife was arriving back from the museum.

I took a long bath and we got ready to get back to Montreal.