Seize the Day

Just back from my Half Marathon. What a blast! It was good fun chatting with everyone at the start line. We all joked and hooted in the cold, and the first two km were more of a social trot than a run. I saw lots of triathlon friends on the course and on the sidelines, I got a kick out of the spectators, and I ran six minutes faster than anticipated. It was pretty darn cold actually. That was fine on the run as I was well dressed for the conditions, but after the race I was very chilled. My friend Brian's advice to put a warm hat in my post-race bag was excellent.

My "gun time" was 1:42:40 while my "chip time" was 1:40:15. In other words it took me two and a half minutes to reach the start line once the gun has fired! You can see the results here. My gun time was good enough for 468th place out of 4189. My chip time ranked 415th. Guess which one I prefer! Based on training times I expected a time of about 1:46:00, so I felt pretty good about my result either way.

Coming into the final stretch I triggered my iPod Nike+ "power song" (see the bottom of this post) and blasted by a dozen runners. The Nike+ iPod pedometer accessory was a mixed result for me, mostly because of my own mistakes. Yesterday I attempted to recalibrate it, and I think I messed it up a bit as I couldn't find a well-measured distance to run. As far as my iPod was concerned I finished the race with 1.25 km yet to be run! I also left it set on "Miles" instead of "Kilometers". Still it gave me reasonably good pace information and the tunes kept me motivated.

After a nice massage and some fruit and snacks I joined the spectators at the finish line and cheered in the other runners for about an hour before heading off to find a nice warm cup of coffee.

Listening to: Move Any Mountain by Shamen from En-tact.