My really ‘big’ run

The day finally arrived. I’ve been talking about running the 5km race of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon for some time now, and my friends Alison, Lisa and I have been training for it. Last night the three of us got together with Lisa’s sister Kim, who was also running with us, for a pre-run dinner. No, we didn’t dine on mounds of pasta — we dined on a scrumptious sushi dinner. A couple of spicy tuna rolls, some veggies, and a tasty rainbow roll later, I felt well loaded with protein and carbs to fuel the next day’s run.

Alison drove in yesterday from out of town for today’s run, so she stayed at my place. We work early today, had our coffee, tea and breakfast of champions (steel cut oatmeal with raisins, walnuts, and some peanut butter), and watched the start of the marathon on the news while we contemplated what awaited us. As the newscaster spoke of the 20,000 participants (marathon, half-marathon, and 5k), and the approximately 30,000 spectators, we both started to get a bit anxious. You see, we’ve been training in the peaceful seclusion of a trail system running along a river by our office, so cranking through a run in front of a crowd wasn’t something either of us were quite prepared for. But there was no turning back. A few final adjustments to our attire (the weather was pretty great, about 16 degrees Celcius, overcast), we headed out to catch the shuttle bus to the start line.

The race was to begin at 10:20am, and we arrived at around 8:15 or so with plenty of time to spare. As we walked past the finish line towards the shuttle, the announcer proclaimed the fact that the leaders of the marathon (who had started just over an hour earlier) were now at their 19th kilometre, and were well on track to set a Canadian record. In fact, the winner did set a record today, coming in at 2 hours and 8 minutes — the fastest marathon ever run on Canadian soil. Incredible. As we strolled along the last kilometer of the course, the magnitude of it all began to settle in. And that’s when I started a long-line of what was to become a series of ‘nervous pees’ over the next hour or so.

Read the rest and see pictures at http://tinyurl.com/y88qrpy