Another one down

Completed my third half-marathon in driving wind and lashing rain yesterday. The Fall Classic race wanders around UBC campus on a route that would be really pretty, and fast, in nicer weather. I was hoping to break 2 hours but now I can blame my 2:07 time on the weather. There was a point in the race when I realized that, with 5km to go, I could potentially turn on my inner ninja and fly to the finish line to achieve a time right around, if not slightly under, 2 hours. Of course, this was after running 16km already and now wearing sopping wet clothes (so they were heavy!). I decided it wasn't something I needed to kill myself for so instead I finished with an almost identical time to the half-marathon in Victoria at Thanksgiving. I guess I'm just not a very fast runner, but I think I'm ok with that.

The best part of yesterday was...wait, there were two things worth noting. First, by the time I finished the race, checked out the race expo a bit and had some grub, changed every article of soaked clothing for its dry equivalent, ran for the bus but didn't make it, took another bus, and walked all the way home from the bus stop, I still got to wake Rocco up from his sleepy cocoon since it was only 10:40AM on a Sunday morning. The second enjoyable part of yesterday afternoon was publicly yelling and shaking my fist at the sky; the sun shone brightly yesterday afternoon so we roamed the city doing xmas errands with our jackets tied around our waists. I ran 21.1km in a total squall, then walked around casually, fully clothed, in gorgeous sunshine. Oh the irony.

Edit: I'm not unhappy with my 2:07 time, sorry if I gave that impression. It does get frustrating when you go out and do something big like run a half-marathon and the most you can say about it is, "my time was exactly the same as my last race." I'd like to be getting better, or even to have something bizarre happen like all I could do was run 4:20 or my knees would fall off. The final story is that this race was pretty fun because of the ridonkulous weather, and I wish I was getting better at long distance racing. I guess I'm getting better at one thing: last year I was registered in the Fall Classic 10km that happens the same morning - and I didn't even leave my apartment to go to the race! So I'm getting better at getting out of bed for a race.