A Wet and Cold Day for a Hard Run at the Zoo
April and Melanie 's BelAir Zoo 10K Race Reports

"Why are we here? Why are we doing this?" Exactly!  What were we thinking - running in this rain!? Whatever, I finished my warm-up and went to line up with Mel and Lynn.  A couple of minutes from the gun, we all ditched our lovely garbage bags. And I heard a woman say, "Oh, getting serious now." :-)

The race started and we made a loop and a bit (~2km) outside the zoo grounds before heading into the zoo.  The plan was for Melanie and Lynn to stick with me at the start as I was sure I would start more slowly than they would.  Ha!   Famous last words.  I blame my fast start on lack of running/training lately and not knowing my pace anymore.   I hit 1km in 3:42!  Whoa!  Too fast.  Slowed down a bit on the next 2 km.  Lynn and I jockeyed for position a bit here.  Melanie was right behind us.  I saw this woman in blue tights and shirt.  She looked like she was running comfortably and her stride looked good. I thought she would be a good person to key off of.  "I WILL keep her in sight," I thought to myself.

I had to make a surge as we entered the zoo grounds to stay with her.  Passed one or two other women in the process.  The course was kind of rolling, not with huge hills, but hills nevertheless (and I felt everyone of them; I haven't run a hilly route in months!).  And lots of twists and turns; some of them almost hairpin turns.  This made maintaining an even pace difficult.  And did I mention it was wet?  Lots of puddles to miss or not miss.  I chose to run the tangents as much as possible and who cares about running through a puddle/small lake or two (well, except for the extra water weight which I am sure was slowing me down :-))I caught up to the blue woman around 5km and we ran together for the next 2K.  I was feeling marginally ok.  At 7km, I figured I had better make a move; I don't have a great finishing kick, so I was going to have to go now and hope she couldn't come with me.

At 8km, I was definitely feeling my lack of fitness.  I wanted to stop or slow down to a crawl.  It was so hard to keep going.  My legs were heavy, and I was starting to get a small side stitch, and was feeling a bit ill.  However, I knew the end was near so I kept pushing as much as I could.  Rounding one tight corner with a huge puddle, I got soaked all the way up the quads by a kid who ran right though it.  "Thanks for the bath," I thought.  But it actually felt sort of good for some reason :-)

Finally heard some guy say 200m to go.  Thank god! It was just about over.  I saw the finish line and ran through it as best I could.  I finished in 39:36 - so a little faster than I thought I was capable of.  I really don't know how I manage to run/race when I have only been back running for 2 weeks and have not done a lick of speedwork since way back in August, and really haven't "trained" since then either.  I imagine my body will be feeling the effects tomorrow.

All three of us finished fairly close.  Then we all jogged back to the car to get changed.  I was cold and wet and cold and wet and cold and wet.  My hands and fingers were frozen and I found it difficult to strip down and get into dry clothes...actually, getting the wet clothes off was easy, I just couldn't get coordinated to get my dry stuff on.  So I was standing in the parking lot half naked shivering and trying to get my shirt and dry pants on.  Even though I eventually got my 3 shirts and fleece jacket and windbreaker (and pants of course) on, I was still feeling cold/chilled.  And stupid me, I did not bring an extra pair of shoes to change into.  So with dry socks, I had to stick my feet into my totally saturated running shoes again!   Ugh!

So the end result was 9th place/762 (female); 2nd/177 AG; 67th/1354 overall.   I won a $75 gift certificate for NB merchandise.  Yay!  New tights are on my list of things to get. Splits:  3.42, 4.01, 4.02, 3.55, 3.53, 3.54, 4.08, 4.26, 3.28, and 4.03  (obviously something off in the 8-9km markings - there is no way I cranked out a 3:28km at the end of a race).

So, it was wet and cold, but fun.  And that's the END  of my 2003 racing season.  I swear, no more races this year.  Gotta focus on next year now. April (I am such a sandbagger) Boultbee Toronto, ONAnd did I mention it was cold and  WET! :-)  I am still warming up.and to add insult to injury, I come home looking forward to a nice long hot shower and what do I get???.........a really quick <5min cold shower!!!  :-( :-((  Aw, what happened to the hot water.  

Melanie's Race Report  

Hi all, I ran the BelAir Zoo10K race today. It was WET and COLD out there - not a nice day to be running a race, but run I did.

April and I got up quite early even though the race started relatively late at 10am.  But since we were picking up a friend, Lynn and driving her car there, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get there, in case we got lost. April and i arrived at Lynn's bright and early at 7:45a.m. Since it was still raining and looking like it wasn't going to let up, we got some garbage bags and cut some head and arm holes before we left.  We ended up getting to the Zoo quite early. Over an hour early as a matter of fact. So that left us time to chat while watching the rain come down.  Finally it was time to warm up so we all got our garbage bags on and headed out into the cold rainy morning.

April and I headed one way and Lynn the other. We ran out of the zoo and followed a sidewalk until we saw another runner coming out of some bushes. Ah what a good idea, since we both had to make a pit stop as well, we followed his example and headed into the bushes. With my warm-up finished, it was time to head back to the car to strip down to my chosen racing outfit, which felt a little brief for the cold and rainy conditions but since I didn't bring anything else, I would have to make do.  I kept the garbage bag on until the last possible moment.  Before I knew it, we were off.

Despite it being a small crowd (the race was capped at 1500), it felt unusually crowded out near the front. I encountered something I wasn't used to doing for too long at the beginning of races- jockeying for position. Since the first Kilometer was a lap around the parking lots, the crowds didn't start to thin out until we got past 2K.  At this point Lynn and April were just ahead of me and I was nicely tucked in behind them.  As usual the three of us started out too fast. We were planning on sticking together for as long as possible.  April put on a surge as we turned into the Zoo proper, and I followed Lynn.  I'm still not sure about the actual route through the zoo. I recall following red or purple paw prints at some point.  The course was full of small rolling hills and lots of turns.  It was hard to keep a rhythm going with all the turning and uphills and downhills, not to mention the large and even larger puddles.  I just tried to keep an eye on Lynn and perhaps pass her near the end.

Today was a day that I wished I had contacts in addition to glasses. The rain made it hard to see and when I tried to wipe them off, I just made it worse. So not only did I have to deal with the twisty-turny course, now I was having trouble making out the ever changing terrain because of my glasses fogging up and being rain spattered. But I persisted and managed to catch up to Lynn around 5K, and I tried to push the pace with her then.  We ran for about 1- 1.5 KM together and then she slowly edged ahead.  I continued to slog through the puddles on my own, still with the idea of catching her at the end. Bad news at the 7K water station. Because of the situation with my glasses, I didn't see a rather large and rather deep puddle and almost fell as I stepped into it. Oops, that really threw me off.   Thank god this race was nearly over.  More hills, more puddles and more turns.  I knew I was getting near the end when I heard the finish line announcer and passed the 9K mark. I put on my final surge to get try to finish closer to Lynn as I knew I had run out of room to catch and pass her.   Just a few more  turns, more puddles and another small hill  and I finally rounded a corner and saw the finish line just ahead.

Yes!!!!!! I finally finished this silly WET race. I still couldn't see well, but with no dry clothes to fix my glasses, I was still in a bit of a haze when I unexpectedly  encountered my friend Leslie at the finish. A welcome and unexpected surprise; he doesn't like cold weather. But April, Lynn and I were too cold to stay and talk and we immediately headed back to the car to change out of our wet clothes and shoes.  Damn, I remembered that I didn't pack another pair of shoes to save carrying extra weight in my bag. What was I thinking when I left the house this morning??? I knew it was raining!!  Oh well, I managed to eventually get into dry clothes and reluctantly stuffed my feet back into my soaking wet shoes to head back to the awards area to check out my official results.

Final stats were as follows:

time 40:45,  4:05 pace

14th/ 762 women and 4th in my AG

79th/ 1354 overall.

Although this race was run inside the zoo, I didn't really notice or just couldn't see any animals out in their enclosures. They probably were smart enough to stay inside :-) I did hear some birds and saw a camel near the finish line.

That was my last race this year. Base building for my spring marathon will start tomorrow.

Melanie Boultbee

Finally warm and dry in Toronto, ON

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