Ottawa Fall Colours

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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 was disguised as a chicken, he was running after her with a pan, it was hilarious:



Another funny event was the runaway bride race:


After these two races it was time for the half and full marathon. I participated in the half, because I had seen that for the marathon we would have to go twice over the course, something that I don't like to do in a race.

I starte near the 2h bunny, but soon I caught up with the 1h45 girl. I intended to stay with her as long as possible, I thought I could go at least ten kilometers, but at km 4 I had the first of my stomach aches, I had to stop to walk.

After half a minute or so I was able to start running again. But this repeated many times during the race, at some points I was really struggling with the pain in my lower abdomen.

Even with all that I still finished the race in 1h58m06, which is a decent time for me. Not even a top 10, but still decent, considering how many times I had to stop to walk because of the pain I was feeling.


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