The 26th annual STWM was held on Sunday, October 18th, and I took the opportunity to run my second half-marathon of the year (the first being the Goodlife Fitness Toronto Marathon back in May), all as part of my training plan to finally run a full marathon next year.
A distinct chill was in the air that morning (-1C at 8:45am start time), and most runners chose to don gloves and toques before leaving home, as flurries threatened, but never fully actualized. Well, that’s Canadian running for you, shorts are really only an option for 6 months of the year up here.
The course runs through downtown Toronto and along the waterfront of Lake Ontario.
Runners started at University and Dundas, continued north up University to Bloor, west across Bloor to Bathurst, then south along Bathurst down to Lakeshore Blvd, turning west and running Lakeshore until hitting High Park, where we turned around coming back east along Lakeshore Blvd, then at the 20km mark the half-marathoners turned north up Bay St to the finishing line at Nathan Philips Square completing the 21.1km run (the full marathoners would run east out to the Beaches and back for the full 42.2km).
My goal time was to break 1h:45m, based on the time I set in my spring half-marathon - 1:45:52 (with average pace of 5:01/km).
Starting the run I actually had my slowest split time (KM 1 - 5:35), (e.g. the pace kept per km), which is unusual because I tend to have a strong start, as I still have lots of energy at this point in the race. However, we started on an uphill slope and the runners were all still tightly packed in together, making it hard to run smoothly with not much room to maneuver. As the runners spaced out more on Bloor, I paced a little better (KM 3 - 4:51), and even speed up nicely running downhill on Bathurst (KM 6 - 4:36, KM 7 - 4:31). I leveled off when I reached the flat terrain on Lakeshore keeping a pace of roughly 5:08 between KM 9 - 18. I think I threw away my gloves in a large pile of various winter clothing items somewhere between KM10-12 on Lakeshore Blvd. With 3 km left the course elevation gained again, and I tried to dig in and stay strong for the finish. I actually picked up my pace again knowing I was so close the the finish line and nearing my goal time. At KM 19 I was pacing 4:52 and sped up to 4:17 for the last km. With my sides aching and my vision blurred I crossed the finish line at 1:45:19 (with an average pace of 4:59/km).
Although I didn’t break 1h:45m, I managed to shave 33 seconds off my previous half-marathon time so that’s encouraging. And looking back over my split times, I’m sure that if I had just a little more leg room during the crowded first km I would have easily made up that 20sec in my first km of the run. So I do feel a little better after reviewing my race stats.
Overall, I placed in the top 15% of all half-marathoners (1532/10257) during this race. I placed in the top 6.5% of all female half-marathoners (366/5570), and top 9% for my age group (74/821). That’s a strong showing for my first year of half-marathoning. So I’m happy with that! I'm feeling confident with my training, and plan to run through the winter building my distance up so that I'm ready to run a full marathon next year.
