Z Valdir's races

Back to the index My last race of the year I did in Ontario, in the city of Cumberland, near Ottawa. They even call the event "Ottawa Fall Colours", to make it more marketable. My wife and I spent a night in a hotel nearby. The room was quite bigger than I'm used to. I liked it a lot. We tried to get the bib the day before, but we got there twenty minutes late, they only stayed open until 3 pm on the Saturday before the race. No problem, we would just get the bib the next day, before the race. So, on Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel shortly after 7h40 and drove the ten minutes or so to the Cumberland Heritage Museum. We parked the car on the lawn near the museum and walked the rest of the way. Getting the bib was quite easy. The timing chip was different than usual, it was an anklet. Before the main race there was a children's race. Many parents were running with their little children. One of them was a father who was disguised as a chef and his daughter...

Back to the index The day before the race my wife and I walked around the parc de la rivière du nord, we also walked a bit on the petit train du nord, we got to km 36 of the marathon: On Sunday morning I walked to the main bus stop in St. Jerôme, took the bus and went to Val-David. The ride was bumpy, I almost got a headache. The organizers started the race a bit earlier, due to the weather forecast. I was supposed to start at 8h40, but at 8h20 we were already leaving the starting area. The first half of the race was still cold, I was wearing my super shoes, so I got incredible results: PB on the 5K (23m13s), PB on the 10K (48m59s, first time under fifty minutes!), PB on the half marathon (1h49m14s, first time under 1h50m!). Right after the halfway mark I stopped to walk for the first time, I wanted to eat my energy bars. I had planned to eat one at every 9 kilometers, but the pace on the first half was so good, I changed my mind and took them later. In the second half the temperatu...