The multi-sport season came to an official close after Cultus lake, but that wasn't going to stop me from sniffing out another race. Next up was the Rock 'n Roll Oasis Montreal marathon.
I think I managed to convince my friends Brendan and Jon to do the race with me. Both had moved from Vancouver a year ago, so it was fun to have a race-reunion again.
The days leading into the race were jammed packed with race meetings, catching up with friends in Montreal, and most importantly supporting the girlfriend with her pre-marathon festivities and overcoming her jitters. Jen, being in the elite field, was allowed to have her own bottles on course. She had learned from friends to use pipe cleaners as little handles to make the bottles easier to grab. It looked like a little arts and crafts project, but clearly made race day a little bit easier. We were busy...
Montreal introduced five new courses this year. The new course was basically pancake flat, running around the island of La Salle. After the fireworks and race gun went off, I found Jen and started to run along beside her. It didn't last long as Jen immediately pointed out a group of men wearing tie-dye shirts and told me to run with them. Have to listen to coach... The group was running steady 3:50/Km, which was perfect pacing for the New York standard of sub-1:21.
The race has a small out and back section near the 12 Km mark. At this point, I had just lost contact with the group. Jen saw me running alone and yelled at me to put the head down and focus on the goal ahead. Again, have to listen to the coach.
I ran as hard as I could and was happy to finish in a seasonal best time of 1:22:19, only 39s off my PB. I found Brendan, Jon and his girlfriend Erin in the finish line area. While waiting for Jen, Brendan and I snuck a trip to McDonald's. The McDs had a perfect patio to cheer on the finishers. We caught up with the "generally-good-looking guy" and past UBC triathlon club coach/president, Vince.
Bag check had some monkey wrenches. My bag was somewhere and the poor volunteers had to search for it for 30 minutes for me. I offered to help with my Bluetooth watch to pick up the phone signal but they politely declined. I helplessly watched them struggle while being a piglet munching on all my post race goodies. Now if they were spending this much effort for me, I can't imagine what the remainder 80% of the race participants would had to endure.
Jen had a good race weekend, cruising in for the win of the 5Km Saturday, and finishing 4th overall in the marathon in 2:46:50! She ran fairly steady splits throughout the entire race, only slowing down twice to retie her shoes (maybe we need to put elastic laces in her run shoes too!). I captured a little video of her at the finish line. It's quite amuzing with commentary from Erin and Jen looking like she's out for a Sunday stroll. Can I run like that too?
After the race, we went out to celebrate with Montreal's specialties: poutine and smoked meat!
