Edmonton Marathon 2012

Well, Edmonton Marathon 2012 turned out to not be the day I had hoped it would be. In several ways. The gist of it is that I did not finish, but let’s step back a bit first.

I am getting a reputation for making it to the start line in the last minute. Today was no different, but honestly, I don’t plan for these things to happen. I’m just cursed with bad luck. Or bad planning. Anyway, I had to stop for the bathroom (McDonalds) before I arrived at Northlands. When I did arrive there, there was huge lineup of cars waiting to turn left, coming south from 75th street – took forever! I decided to park somewhere else; on a side street off of 118th Ave. The problem with that was I had to jog pretty far before I could actually cross 75th street and head towards the start line. I didn’t jog. I ran really hard so that I could get to the start in time. Like, REALLY hard.

I heard the national anthem being sung, as I threw my car keys under some rubble, some 300 meters from the start, and then arrived at the start with about 20 seconds to spare. Or was it 10 seconds?

Off we went, and my lungs were still hot after that sprint to the start. The first kilometer went pretty quick, but I didn’t even notice, since I was kind of hyped up after that “warmup”. I decided to stay a bit behind my friends Brendan Lunty and Chris Stone – both great marathoners. I felt great for quite a while. I passed 4 km in 15:00 and 10km in 37:27. I wasn’t losing ground to the group ahead of me, and things were going good.

I had been worried about the potential high temperature, but so far in the race, it was quite nice. 16-17 C with a bit of a wind here and there to help with the cooling. Not bad at all, and running felt so easy. As we were heading back towards Northlands, I noticed my legs (hamstrings, especially) were beginning to tighten a bit, so I started slowing deliberately. At 16 km or so, the group ahead of me picked up the pace considerably. At that point, I wasn’t far behind them, but when that surge came, I quickly lost ground to them. Oh, well, I didn’t really care much about that. I had planned on doing my own race anyway.

As I passed 20 km in 1:15, everything suddenly became way more difficult. Legs were starting to hurt, and the same with my feet. Hamstrings had cramping tendencies, and I realized this is not going to end well. As we headed into the residential area after 26 km, I had trouble running 4:00/km. The thought that was going through my mind was that since I am registered for Regina Marathon 3 weeks later, I should be smart and shut it down soon, and just take this as a good workout. The next thing that happened was that I was not paying attention, and got off course, just like that. That probably was a good thing, because everything was hurting. Ankles, feet, legs. Somehow, I must have taken a bad step somewhere, because my right foot is quite bruised underneath.

So endeth the Edmonton Marathon for 2012 for Mr. Renman! Haha – I just laugh it, in hindsight!

My friends did well. Brendan powered himself into 2nd place, and Chris 4th place. It got pretty ugly hot towards the end, but these boys has guts to spare.

The negative – I may have chosen the wrong shoes, since my feet and legs got so beat up so early.

The positive – I felt really great for the first 17 km. I just need to figure out how to extend that feeling for 42 km!

Tomorrow is another day – let’s recharge, shall we?

Top 10 Overall Results

`

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•