This has been another summer when I haven’t planned a lot of racing as I had been training for the Victoria Marathon. After making the decision to not marathon on the other side of the country, I started planning a race schedule with events closer to home. The Summer 5K was at the top of my list; it was a new running event, and it was close to home. Knowing that it was sponsored by Mercedes Benz and organized by vrPro, it was bound to be a good event.
On Sunday morning, my teen son who has been playing around with photography for the past few weeks, offered to come with me. “I’m leaving early,” I warned him. But the idea of practising action shots was calling him. Just before 8:00, we pulled into the Mercedes Benz parking lot and, while I went to pick up my race kit, he caught a few more z’s. The start was at 10:00 and it was already hot and sunny.
The volunteers from Mercedes Benz and Kelly Arnott of vrPRO were busy getting set up. Registration was open, men were setting up the barbecue for the after-race, the Pearl Izumi van with its tent had just pulled in…and the bathrooms were ready – inside the building! In fact, the bathroom facilities were one of the most exciting parts of the race: private stalls with doors with locks that actually worked, sinks with running water, paper towels, and mirrors. It was the first time that I have had access to such a luxurious bathroom at a race.
Feeling anxious, I headed out about 15 minutes earlier than planned to warm up and was I ever glad I did! When I registered for the race, I thought “Burlington – flat. This should be a nice, easy course.” The terrain seemed flat on the course video too. But when I started to warm up, I realized how wrong I was. As soon as I turned out of the parking lot, I faced a very slight incline, which became a bit steeper as I approached the 1K mark. As I continued to run, I saw the course plateau a bit and breathed a sigh of relief, only to get to the top and – you guessed it – saw the road climb again. I turned around to head back to the start to warm up and get my head into the game, realizing that I would have to carefully pace the first half of the race so that my legs wouldn’t fry at the end.
And that’s exactly what I did. 
I checked my watch at 1K and my timing was exactly where I wanted it to be: 4:20. The next 1500 metres were basically uphill and I knew there were a lot of women ahead of me. “Keep it like this,” I told myself. “You have 4 kilometres left to catch them in.” It took 5 minutes to run the next kilometre (uphill), during which I picked my targets to pass, one by one. Each time, I listened for their breathing to figure out how much space was behind me and how much more of a gap I needed to open. There was one more in sight and she would not let me pass her. When I moved right, she moved right; if I ran left, she ran left. So much for a friendly local race. I threw in a surge and fought to work my way around her and had the upper hand (or foot) at the halfway point. Now, there were no women in sight – but I knew there were still 6 or 7 ahead, judging by a volunteer’s counting – and I faced the part of the course I had been dreading more: the downhill.
I hate running downhill. In a race situation, it ends up being a real quad-buster for me, and I have avoided races like the Sporting Life 10K just because of the fast decline. Here, all I needed to do was (1) keep my pace and (2) stay ahead of the women behind me. It wasn’t long before I realized that keeping my pace was not enough as I could hear panting behind me; I was certain that it was the lady who kept cutting me off.
Sure enough, it was and it wasn’t long before we were running neck and neck, each of us trying to pull ahead of the other. Holding my pace was not going to happen; I had to pick it up. “Stay with her, Cynthia. Fight it.” We turned and the finish line was in sight. Now we were on a relatively flatter surface but into the highway wind and with about 700 metres to go, I pulled ahead. Silence. I felt the awkward stillness of her feet stopping behind. “Keep pushing. You can’t be sure that was her.” I stretched out my legs a little bit more, ensuring that I opened the gap a little more and hoped to catch two more gals who suddenly came into sight. Both were slowly down and if there were a little more real estate, I probably could have caught them, but I ended up finishing seconds behind.
Was I happy with my time? Not at all. I finished in 22:39, which is slow for me. However, the conditions were similar to the Beamsville Bench 5K that I raced last year and times were comparable. I also finished in the top 10 (whoever was counting missed a few) and first in my age group, which earned me a pair of Pearl Izumi shoes. Hooray for new shoes!
The reality, though, is I wasn’t training for this race. It was a C-race; I just threw myself into it to see what I could do: race with my head, pick up the pace when I needed to, run tough. My time wasn’t stellar but I can live with it, and it has given me some time goals to focus on while I keep chasing my dreams.
