Army Run ½ marathon - race report (Read 543 times)

Great race in Ottawa, and terrific the support. First time the race has been held, and there were just under 7000 entrants, which is a Canadian record for a first-time event (or so the organizers told us ) Injured soldiers left 15 minutes before the main race start, which let us pass them one by one later in the race. Pretty powerful going by runners who've had legs amputated recently past halfway in a ½ marathon. Anyway, I was there as part of the military team competition, in which we came second for military mixed teams (darn) and I ran much better than I expected. The course was very similar to the Ottawa Marathon half course, mostly flat with a few hills between 8 and 13 km (I think) Anyway, my km splits: 3:41 - downhill overall first K 3:54 - running the women's leaders at this point 3:52 3:52 3:54 3:54 - they got ahead of me, and then I dropped off pace 4:05 4:00 3:56 3:42 (38:56 through 10K) - we came to some hills, and I always like to push a little more on hills. Ran past the pack I'd been with at the beginning over a few K 3:39 3:44 3:41 3:53 3:45 3:04 - these two splits can't be right. Never had my garmin do this before though 4:41 3:49 3:48 3:52 (38:02 for second 10K) 3:48 0:59 (for 241 m, so my garmin read the course 140m long)

Whoops... Overall time 1:21:30.9 chip time. I think I accidentally submitted that before I was done with it. I was pretty wobbly after finishing, had one of the medical staff come up to me for a bit, but I made it along the chute to the recovery tent. Overal 19th of 29xx runners in the ½, turns out there were two guys from my old XC team in front of me, one of them in third place. That was pretty cool.

Criag, Great job in exceeding your expectations, and in running good, even splits. Fast running!

Nice race, Craig. I wanted to run this one, but it wasn't in the cards this year.