you got no fear of the underdog

I had my first big effort since last spring in the form of pacing the Hamilton Road2Hope Marathon.  It wasn’t quite race effort but, it certainly was a step in the right direction.  I’m still training to train right now although I feel close to being able to train to race.  My legs felt good in the health sense although now they are pretty tired and sore. 

Josephat Ongeri and I were commissioned to pace Moses Macharia to a 2:09:30 marathon.  The plan was to pace 10km at that pace (3:05/km) although I thought realistically I would end up pacing through 15km at a slightly slower pace.  Josephat’s plan was to pace through 30km and go on and finish the race.  Josephat and I ran side-by-side with Moses tucked in behind us.  Our first three kilometers were passed in 9:36 into a head wind. Once we truned a corner we picked up the pace and got to 10km in 31:10. I kept leading a 3:07 pace through 13km.  A little after 13km Josephat upped the pace a little and I tucked into third place and eventually fell off the leaders and then started into a jog to my car (which was close to the 20km mark) while people still cheered encouragements at me thinking I was planning on finishing.  Josephat and Moses went through halfway in 65 something and then Josephat dropped Moses and went on to win in 2:15:51.  Andrew Smith finished second in 2:27 on a training run of very even splits which really impressed the third through fifth place Kenyans, who all went out a little hard.

The night before the race Gord Dickson made a reference to me about Josephat pulling a “Paul Pilkington“.  He felt that Josephat was stronger and would be tough to beat, even if he did have to do the front-running for 30km.

After the awards Josephat was getting some digits from a girl and Karanja puts his arm around him and looks at me and says “this guy wins everything” with a big smile across his face.  Josephat downplayed his casanova moves on the ride home and changed the subject by recalling the time he ran home from work one day, Bronte road to Dundas.

A couple of recovery days are lined up for me and then a trip out to Quebec City with the boys for CI’s.