Although I embrace the concept of venturing into the
unknown when I start a race, I do feel that one should have some kind of goal
in mind in order to help resist the temptation to just run off the road at the first Tim Horton’s and
spend the morning eating TimBits. At the Angus Glen Half Marathon, my goal was
the amorphous and always disclaimer-friendly “JTF”. Just to Finish.
 |
| Set a PB, Pip. |
I wonder if my expectations were a bit too modest.
The Angus Glen races are held in Unionville, an
affluent dormitory community just northeast of Toronto. There is a 10K, a
family 5K, and the Half Marathon. Because it’s November, bad weather is
possible and is not feared. The race start and finish are at the clubhouse of
the Angus Glen Golf Club (once a Black Angus cattle farm), a beautiful course
that hosted the Canadian Open in 2007. The golf club facilities are terrific and welcoming, with lots of indoor square footage so that everyone can stay warm while waiting to run. Warmth was a cherished commodity on race morning, as the temperature outside was around minus 1 Celsius, although the sun shone hopefully. The start time is a sleeper-inner’s dream: 9:00 am, which includes an extra hour as the clocks go back.
I wanted to run in this race because it is small and
rural, the opposite of the manic Waterfront Marathon I have run the past few
years. The race organizers place a cap on entries to make sure the facilities
aren’t overtaxed and the resources aren’t clobbered. It works. There are not a
lot of volunteers (in fact there was no one at all at the far turnaround of the
course), but not many are really needed, and the ones who stood swathed in
goose down and GoreTex at the aid stations to hand us our water did so beautifully.
After all 350 or so of us half marathoners got started,
I began running with an easier and slightly faster step than I can remember
taking lately, as I was carried along with the others. The first few kilometres
wound through a neat, trim housing development at the edge of the golf course.
I could picture the real estate agent saying to prospective house buyers, “You
do golf, don’t you?”
Heading away from the populated areas, the course
traces the outlines of farms that in another ten years will be housing
developments. Many farmhouses along the way were empty and boarded up, the
properties for sale.
I tried to keep an even pace as we ran up and down the
long rolling hills at the base of the Oak Ridges Moraine. I was bundled up
against the cold, which was good a thing while we were running northward into
the wind. After the northernmost turnaround, all of a sudden I had the wind at
my back and the sun in my face and I was actually too warm. The last couple of kilometres winds along the cart paths of the golf course itself. There are surprising twists and turns and some steep, sharp hills, which can be depressing if you are not expecting them, which I wasn’t. An older gentleman—who obviously had a loftier goal than I had—passed me on one of the hills, and I watched him disappear into the distance to claim whatever place I might have had just off the bottom of my age group.
 |
| With running and writing friend Sam after the finish |
I had low expectations for myself in this race. I haven’t run the half marathon distance in at least a year, so I was ready to treat myself gently and plod along. It was one of those races where I was going to be happy just to see how things went and not make a fool of myself. As the morning progressed, I began to ask more of myself, trying for (and getting) even splits between the kilometre markers. As we got close to the end, I pushed harder. Amazingly, my body, which has spent most of the summer building a deck instead of running, responded to my pushes. I crossed the finish line with just a bit left in the tank, a few minutes faster than my most optimistic plan. I expected more and I got more. Go figure.
Low expectations are being retired for the foreseeable
future. There is no place for them in my life over the coming months. As I get ready for Ironman Muskoka in August
2015, it’s time to start thinking like an athlete again.
No comments:
Post a Comment