I cycled down to the start line with Chris from the Crossfit Colosseum running group for the 7am start. It was about 7K from my place, so a nice warmup.

The weather was nice; perhaps a touch cool, but perfect for running.

The assembly area was inside Exhibition Stadium, and when we got there it didn’t seem like there were too many people, maybe only a couple of hundred? There was a packet pickup station, a bag drop, and the food and drink booths, with a few people milling around.

When we walked over to the corrals though, which were around the corner and down on Lake Shore, that’s where everyone was, and there must have been 5000 people already in the corrals.

We had about 10 minutes to start time so got into our corrals. The music was pumping and the crowd was ready to go.

And then we were off!

It’s fun running on city streets, especially one I drive so often. Actually I run this route quite a bit too, but on the path, closer to the lake, not on the actual road. There was a great turnout of fans and music along the sides.

I kept a decent pace of mostly between 5 and 5:30 min/km – thinking quite specifically that I didn’t want to come out too fast (at the St. Pat’s 5K my first km was in the 4min range), or push my heart rate up too high – I’m trying to keep it under 160bpm, as I tend to gas out when it stays over that for too long.

I’d eaten a breakfast earlier this morning (putting into action one of my findings from my earlier race assessments) and felt good.

At around the 2.5k mark the  race leaders passed us coming back the other way. Man, they must have been moving fast – in fact the top 10 finishers all had times under 32 minutes – the winner had a time of 29:52, with a pace of 2:59!

On the way back there is a hill climb – not terrible, but enough to slow you down and make you work a little harder, with a water and nuun station shortly following.

The climb peaked my heart rate so I grabbed a nuun and walked for about 10 seconds.  Looking back now, this would be the point where I missed out PRing this race. I probably didn’t need walk with only a couple of K left, but I’ve been hyper sensitive about my heart rate since I realizing my gas out/160bpm ratio. Another lesson learned.

My official chip time for the race is 54:37, with an average pace of 5:27.  This is a race time that is a couple of seconds longer than my pr in 2019, with a pace time that is exactly the same.

I feel good about it.  I still haven’t pr’d the 10K, I think things are looking up.  Now I’ve got to find another 10K, I don’t have anymore scheduled for this year (a half, a 15k, and some 7 & 13K trail races).