Notes
Goal coming into the race was just to run hard and try to get under 19. My warmup felt a little sluggish but hip and knee weren’t too bad. The race start was moved further west on college so the turnaround on the loop was closer to Bloor. It was sunny and quite hot but not really humid.
I started out behind the 20 minute pacer but felt comfortable with my pace as I was working pretty hard. Probably hit the 1K2, mark in around 3:42. Was able to maintain pace for the 2nd km and then started the long grind up to the Bloor. Was happy to see I hit the halfway mark around 9:15 and was feeling ok. But at this point we started lapping walkers while trying to maintain pace going uphill. I started suffering pretty quickly and by the turnaround was really feeling it.
I felt a bit of a sidestitch coming on and again had problems really pushing the downhills. At this point my goal was just to hold on and wait for the final stretch. Breathing was pretty much accelerated the last mile. Turning onto the final stretch I had a runner in sight but just couldn’t up the pace. Tried my best just to maintain my speed over the long stretch and fight hard to get as far under 19 as possible. Not my best race but not my worst either. A better effort than Lululemon at least.