In the month of May

Early this morning I woke up and mumbled something to Gillis across the hotel room about wanting more sleep.  It was race morning so I promptly got up, went to the washroom, gobbled down a bowl of Go Lean and was about to head down to the lobby when Gillis said “hey, it’s only 4am!”  I looked at the clock in the room in disbelief, checked my watch in a confused state.  How did this happen?.. The night before I set an alarm clock and then right before I turned out the lights I set my cell phone as a back up, by mistake way too early.  We then decided to try to get another hour of sleep but after being up for 15 minutes on race morning it just didn’t pan out.  So I apologize Gillis, for robbing you of some much-needed sleep at that god forsaken hour.

When I was finishing up my warm-up and looking down (and I mean down!) Yonge st  I was really motivated to post a good time and take advantage of the fast course and the ideal weather conditions.  When the gun went off I went right to lead and made it obvious to the other racers that I was going to push for a fast time.  We went through the first km in 2:43 and 3km in 8:23.  Now I don’t want to complain about the wind because the conditions were good but we were running into the wind therefor leading took a little extra toll.  At that point there were three guys right on my tail so I decided to tuck in for a couple of minutes and let someone else lead for a bit.  Once again I got to the front and pushed the pace and Dagim fell off before we hit 5km in 14:03.  When I heard that split I decided that I wanted, at least, a shot at sub 28 minutes so I kept on pushing.  By 8km Kip and Gillis were still both there and I was getting nervous that they were feeling fresh behind me so I tucked in behind Kip.  For a minute or so it felt very easy having someone else lead and I was able to collect myself and collect some energy for the final push.  At 9km I made a strong move which, I hoped, would break me free of the other two guys.  I created a little daylight but once we went around a corner we were all right together again.  I knew I had a couple more gears and two more times I upped the tempo towards the finish tape… here’s the video

and the interview right afterwards

If you can’t watch the videos it was a tight battle for the win in which I barely came out on top over Eric Gillis (also in 28:08) and Kip Kangogo (28:09).  The finishing time of 28:08 is a road PB with a huge asterisk because the course drops about 80m over 10km! RESULTS The foot felt good enough in the race and even now I would say it didn’t really beat it up too bad but I’m not out of the woods yet.  I’ll need to keep and eye on it to get back to pain-free.  That will mean a couple of non-impact sessions and all of my running will be on soft surfaces in the next little bit.

CRS ARTICLE with pictures.