2:44:05

2:44:05

Let the record show that is my official gun time for the 114th edition of the Around the Bay Race was 2:44:05. My chip time - the actual time it took me to complete the course - isn't available from Sportstats yet but my watch has it at 2:43:11. Gun time and chip time differ because it always takes some time to cross the starting line when 6,000 are running in a pack.

I am very tired.

This is the best I could have done on this day. I gave it absolutely everything and had nothing - nothing - in the tank at the end. The last two km were agony. I didn't sprint to the finish. Two different medical personnel asked me if I was alright as I shuffled toward the food line in a daze afterward. It was the hardest athletic thing I have ever done.

I ran exactly the race I planned on running. I started out fast in the first 10km, slowed down gradually in the second 10km and dragged my ass the last 10km. North Shore Boulevard should be flattened. I don't care what it costs or if the military is involved.

Here, according to my watch, are my 5km split times with totals in parentheses.

5km: 24:41. (24:41)That's very quick for me.
10 km: 25:46 (50:28) At this point, I felt great. There was trouble ahead.
15km: 26:47 (1:17:15) Pace is starting to slacken, but I felt I was in good shape.
20km: 26:49 (1:44:05) I saved my race here. This 5km was only two seconds than the last 5km.
25 km: 28:50 (2:12:56) On the road to hell.
30 km 30:14 (2:43:11) This stretch includes The Valley Inn Road.

Valley Inn Road was as bad as I feared. I set a new heart high - 185 bpm - about two thirds of the way up. I ran the entire way and paid for it dearly in the last 3km.

My average bpm for the race was a whopping 174 bpm which means I ran 30km at an average of 94 per cent of my maximum rate heart. That's either incredibly impressive or incredibly stupid - or perhaps both. But you can see why I feel I had nothing more to give.

I have two sizable blisters on the instep of both feet - that's what you get for going to motion control shoes a week before race. They started to hurt about the 10km mark but never got noticeably worse except on the downhills. My back aches a little, my thighs will be barking hard tomorrow and my right ankle seized up about 25 minutes after the race once I cooled down. I'm having some stomach cramps, as I usually do after big races. But otherwise I feel pretty good. It's unreasonable to assume that you're going to run 30km and not feel some discomfort.

After all my worrying about the weather, it was OK. Bright and sunny with a pretty good breeze but from an odd direction. Most of the time, winds in this province blow west to east but this one blew northwest. It made for a slight headwind going out, but it was at our backs along North Shore Boulevard which was nice. But it was a strong headwind on the way home down York though and that really sucked.

I wasn't really cold though. Spec photographer John Rennison, who has run the Badwater Ultramarathon saw my shorts and said "you're crazy." When I guy who's run 100 miles through Death Valley says you're nuts, that's a bit disconcerting. But I hate being cold on training runs and I hate being hot when I race and I don't regret my fashion decisions at all.

And now we party. Sort of. Having been on the wagon for a month and having been pretty good about food, we're having some wine and a pizza tonight. One glass and I'll likely be unconscious. My daughter hasn't thrown up in a few hours so that's worth celebrating too. My wife, soon to be a nominee for mother-of-the-year, gave up her own 5km race to stay at home with our daughter while I ran. She didn't make me feel bad about it and has been my biggest supporter through all of this. It's more impressive than 30km, that's for damn sure.

And so what's next? The only thing more important than the race you just did is the one you're doing next. But it's a little early to think marathon right now. My body needs to forget about the suffering of today before signing up for another. Waterloo is on April 27, however, and Mississauga on May 10...

But today is about today. I'm  happy because I know I gave it everything I had - whether I made my goal or not didn't matter as much as knowing that the effort was there. That's the measure of these things to me - how far can you push yourself? I found my limit today at about 28km and kept going anyway. Was it fun? Not at the time, but in retrospect, yeah. That doesn't make much sense, does it?

But then again, neither does running 30km.