What a great day for a race. I drove down to Newmarket the night before the race, and met up with my friend Richard. We went out for a good carb loading meal that night before the race. We choose a good buffet restaurant Frankie Tomattos in Markham. They had a great selection of foods so we were able to load up on several plates of food. Yummy! After dinner we were so full. Or at least I was. The race wasn't until 9:30am the next morning, so we had plenty of time to get up and make breakfast. We got to the race site an hour early which was great because Richard had plenty of time to take some great photos. Wow, downtown Newmarket sure has changed. What a great site for the race, so much better than last year at the Upper Canada Mall. No busy traffic and a beautiful park. This is a race I hope to do every year from now on. There were a few hundred people in the race, not exactly sure but when the gun went off, it was difficult running in such a big crowd. I started near the front and tried my best to run with the lead pack. There was a girl in my AG that went out a bit faster than me, and I had difficulty keeping up with her, she was about 20s ahead of me during the whole race. I ran as close to threshold pace as possible, but I got a cramp around 3K, which made it a bit difficult. I ran through it however, and managed to cross the finish line in 24:11. Not bad, but I felt I could have maybe pushed a bit more and made it under 24 minutes, since my PR last year was 24:30. Richard and I were in for a long wait, for the awards ceremony. While we waited I got a message from my friend Mark saying that he couldn't get anywhere near the race to meet us. They had all the roads blocked off. It was a good thing we had cell phones. I explained that he would have to drive around and try to meet us from the North side. A few minutes later we were able to catch up with him and chat for awhile. We tried to line up for food but that was out of the question, just too many people! We eventually waited and lined up during the start of the awards assembly. That worked better because there were less people in line by that time. The food was awesome. I managed to give Richard something to eat, otherwise he would have wasted away to nothing, waiting for the closing ceremony. Eventually they started the awards. The girl in my AG that had been 20s ahead of me, won the race, and in between me and her there were two small girls. I guess I should have pushed harder after all! I ended up coming 4th overall and winning the first place medal for my AG. This was because the gave the other girl the medal for winning the race instead of an AG medal. Oh well, it was great getting a medal for the race, it is always a good keepsake.
After the race Richard and I went for a bike ride at Fairy Lake and we rode along the same trail that we ran along during the race. It threatened rain for us but never actually rained. We ended up having a great day and get some great photos. I think Richard has become a professional photographer. After the bike ride we did a photo shoot for my body building file. It almost looks like a professional shoot, I can't wait until I get the real "after" shots. We were only doing progress shots and they look amazing.
