Sundown in the Paris of the prairies

I had a great weekend at the Saskatchewan marathon in Saskatoon.  The Saskatoon Road Runners Association (SRRA) invited Dylan and I out there for four days to lead some fun runs and do talks at a school, expo and pasta dinner.  We capped off the weekend by running in the 10km (moi) and the half marathon (Dylan).  The 10km course is flat (surprise!) and gave me a good tempo workout (32:13) while being a little cautious to save my legs for my pacing job at The Inferno Tuesday night (more about that later).

When the SRRA invited me a few months ago I was hoping to talk about a successful Rotterdam marathon at the pasta dinner (that didn’t go as planned).  Sometimes I’ll talk about the Olympics to a crowd but the night before a marathon I don’t like to describe the last three kilometres I battled through to finish the Olympic marathon. People don’t need to hear about a death crawl to get them pumped up the night before a race.  My Olympic qualifying was pretty simple compared to Dylan’s races around the world and getting his time at the 11th hour (that’s what he talked about). I addressed the carb loaders about my training in Kenya, which is good for me because I have a lot of pictures from my trips to Iten.

The most entertaining question of the night went to the lady who asked, “do you ever get motivation by telling yourself something like having to run to a certain point in a race under a specific time and if you don’t your mother would die?”  I often cut races or workouts into manageable sections however, nobody’s life is on the line.

When I first checked into my hotel room I thought my room was pimping because it had a separate bedroom off of the living room.  And then I went to Dylan’s suite!

Delta Bessborough, across the South Saskatchewan River:

Good timing with the horse carriage. Delta Bessborough:

View from my room at the Delta Bessborough (you can see where I took the first photo from):

Tuesday (May 28th) is The Inferno track meet here in Guelph.  A couple of weeks ago they were looking for a rabbit in the 5000m and I thought, perhaps, I could be ready by race day.  So I tried a track workout last Wednesday to see how I would feel running 2:46/km.  The main part of the session was 3 x 1000m and I managed 2:45’s with three minutes rest.  From that session I figure I have a good shot of taking the race through 3000m in 8:20 so I signed on to be the rabbit.  I made sure I didn’t go too hard in the SRRA 10km on Sunday to be prepared for Tuesday night.  It’s going to be a big ask from my body considering my training since Rotterdam, but good fun nonetheless.

Tickets are $10 and other than seeing me suffer there are some interesting races.  The women’s 5000m pits the ‘distance’ girls against the ‘steeple’ girls and ‘triathlete’ girls.  The men’s 800m has rabbit extraordinaire Matt Scherer taking the field through at a fast pace. And the men’s steeple has three Speed Riverians with World qualifying marks all racing the steeple together for the first time.