Ottawa Marathon 2023

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The day before the race

My wife and I left Montreal on Saturday morning, we travelled to our contry's capital for the Ottawa race weekend.

Arriving at the hotel we got our room right away, which was a nice surprise. We left our things in our room and went out, each one in a different direction. My wife went to a museum, I went to the Expo to get my bib.

This year they changed the venue of the Expo. Every year it was at the Shaw Centre, which is very central, easily accessible. This year they moved it to the Landsowne Park, a few kilometers to the south.

The organizers provided a shuttle bus service connecting the city centre to the Expo area, but when I got to the starting point of the shuttle, there was a long line of people waiting for the bus. I got in line and had to wait for more than twenty minutes to get into the bus, because the first one left and I had to wait for the next one to come in.

At the Expo everything was quite fast, there where no delays. I may have cut in front of a line, because there was a ton of people in there and it was just a little bit chaotic to get the bib. Anyway, I got the T-shirt and walked around the place. There was the usual assortment of vendors and organizations, I didn't stop at any.

While waiting for the bus to go back to the city centre I met by chance another Brazilian, he was a student who came to Canada for a conference in Quebec City. Before going back home he wanted to run a marathon here, so he chose the Ottawa marathon.

When I got back to the city centre I walked to the museum that my wife was in and met her there. She told me the museum was not as good as it was before, a large part of it had been repurposed as a children's museum, so it was not as interesting for us. Therefore we walked back to the hotel, spent some time at the Rideau Shopping Centre.

We went out again at 17h20, we had reservations for an early dinner. We went to a restaurant that we had visited before the pandemic. I vaguely remembered the way and was a bit surprised when the map service on my wife's cell phone gave us a slightly different path to get there. But we followed the phone, of course. And got lost... After a lot of walking around, we finally got to the place and saw that my intuition had been right all along and the map service got it wrong. Oh well...

We had a lovely pasta dinner, the food was excellent and the place was quiet, there was only one other person in the big room with us.

Back to the hotel for showering, watching reruns of Friends and Big Bang Theory. I was in bed by 10 pm and fell asleep in a matter of minutes.

Race Day

In the morning, before the race, I moved some of our stuff back to the car, to make my wife's life easier when doing the check-out later in the day. Then I got myself ready, had a light breakfast, just some cheese and milk.

Shortly after 6h30 my wife and I left the hotel and went to the starting line on Elgin street. My wife stayed near the starting line, I went all the way to the back, to the purple corral.

In my corral there were the pacers for 4h30 and 4h45. I placed myself more or less between them.

The start this year was done in four waves with four minutes between each wave, so I started my race at 7h12. I stopped where my wife was standing for her to take a picture of me and then I went out with the other runners.

This year I was less aggressive than last year, I went just a bit faster in the beginning than I would normally go, so it took me longer to reach the other pacers. 

I don't know exactly when I reached the faster pacers, but around the halfway point I was close to the 4h10 guy. Considering that he had left four minutes before me, that was already a good improvement for me.

But that was the last good news I had. The temperature had been climbing up all morning and by the halfway point it started to bother me and to slow me down. By km 25 I was already walking long stretches and the pacers started passing me left and right.

The organizers had misting showers at many points of the race and there were quite a few citizens spraying water on the runners, but it was not enough, the sun was too strong and tons of people were struggling on the way to the finish line.

By km 38 the 4h45 pacer passed me, I tried to follow him, but couldn't keep up even for 200m. My goal then was just to not allow the 5h pacer pass me. 

There was a good crowd in those last four kilometers, but I had no more energy and the sun was sucking every bit of strength I had left.

In the end I crossed the finish line with a time of 4h54m05s. Not my best time lately, but considering what happened last year under similar conditions, I was quite happy to get a sub-5.

I got my medal and my food, got a nice beer and went back to the hotel, where I met my wife and we rode back to Montreal.

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