Smokin' PR, I love gravity, and runners have sexy legs

WOO-HOO! Today was race day!!!

The weather could not have been more perfect - I woke up to sunny skies and 10 degree temps or so (that's Celsius, relax, I'm not nuts...) - a touch chilly once I'd checked my jacket, but lovely as soon as the run got under way.

Yonge Street is a whole other world when it's filled with runners instead of blaring cars. I loved running through familiar neighborhoods, counting down the intersections, having a blast. The course is an incredibly sweet downhill - only one uphill of note on the whole thing - and it's touted as "Canada's fastest 10k" in all the race ads. I can see why. Although my quads took a bit of a pummelling, the speed was glorious. And of course, it was very encouraging to have the CN tower in sight the whole way down - you could always see the "finish line"!

The start was an incredible agglomeration of humanity - about 8000 runners showed up and we were packed! The gun went off, we cheered - and then we shuffled to the start line for the next 5 minutes! Of course, as soon as we really got under way, I thought I had to pee. Even though I went 20 minutes before. Figures. But that went away before long and soon I was cruising under the Beltline, where some spectators had hung a hot pink sign on the bridge proclaiming "runners have sexy legs!" Everyone was getting a laugh and suddenly I welled up with excitement - this is a race, time to push, it's on, baby! PR, here I come... and maybe, someday, I too will have legs worthy of admiration.

The organization was superb - the volunteers were right on with the water (which of course I nevertheless managed to splash all over myself), the bands on the course were fun and upbeat and just where you needed them. And we got finisher's medals at the end, wheeee!

Here is the statistical lowdown:

My chip time: 55:53 - I smote my previous PR by almost 7 minutes! 5k split 28:34 - not only does that make it a very respectable negative, but that's also 9 seconds faster than my 5k PR - ha ha ha!

Even my gun time made me happy - I was aiming to break 1 hour by my chip - and I managed to do it officially! 59:42 put me in 3356th place (how glorious...), 1263/3626 women and 99/235 in my age group. Looks like I'm a bona-fide middle-of-the-packer.


No action shots, unfortunately, as this was a solo race for yours truly, but when I came back to rez, my friend made me this sign and snapped the pic for me. And no, there will be no pictures of my legs, until they magically become sexier. (It didn't help that they were stained yellow after stretching in the dandelions...)

So here I sit, a little sore but very satisfied. I've taken an "ice" bath (really, just a cold one... much easier to take), a hot shower, and I've shoveled myself full of food and water. And now I have blogged too... because yes, I am a blogaholic. All in all, not bad considering I'm usually not even awake by this time.

I guess that leaves the rest of the day free for studying.

Joy to the world.