Last weekend, Stephen ran his first marathon - the Goodlife Toronto Marathon. For those of you who aren't aware, a marathon is a 42.2km run (26.2 miles). He'd been training fairly well up until we visited Costa Rica, and then fell completely off the training bandwagon, so his longest training run in the lead-up was 26km. I was pretty concerned for him.
The last few weeks have been pretty atrocious weather here - it rained nearly every day for 3 weeks. The weather stations were reporting statistics like "until the clouds parted Wednesday afternoon and a merciful sun briefly shone on Torontonians, 4 days had gone by since we saw it last. To make matters worse, of those bleak 96 hours, it rained for 68." So this was the weather Stephen was running in: 8 degrees and raining. I don't have any pictures of him actually running, but here's one from the local newspaper to give you an idea of the conditions:
The course started a long way north of the city and ran down Yonge St (the main north-south street in the city), west out along the lakeshore past our house to a turnaround point, and then back along the lakeshore to finish in Queens Park, near the city.
I ran my 5km run earlier in the day as part of my recovery from my stress fractures, and I finished in 29:40 after aiming for a sub-30, with no bone pain or issues, which was good. After my race finished, I hopped on the subway back home, showered and changed, and then Jax and I hopped back on the subway to get back to the finish line to see Stephen finished. When we got there at around the 3 hour mark, I saw a guy who'd overdone it - he fell flat on his face 100m away from the finish line, and his legs were so wobbly that he couldn't get up again. He seemed pretty delirious and he had to be supported to make it over the finish line - this made me more than a little worried about Stephen. Luckily Stephen was ok, and I caught up with him 2km from the end, jogging along with a smile on his face.
Stephen reported to me after the race that he started getting a sore knee at around the 16km mark, so he dropped back his pace a bit. It didn't get any better, but he finished the marathon with plenty left in the tank in a time of 3 hours, 37 minutes and 3 seconds - not bad for a first run. There are some fairly cool statistics for his run available here, including the fact that over the final 12km he passed 44 runners but was passed by 14, and when the winner of the marathon finished, Stephen was at the 30km mark with 12km left to go.
Apparently the marathon organisers took a leaf out of the Vancouver Olympics' books, because this is the medal that he won for finishing. It seriously weighs a couple of kilos. It's fairly amusing considering that people were pretty exhausted at the end of the marathon - so they gave them giant heavy weights to carry during their recovery.
All in all, things went well, and he's looking forward to training for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on October 16th. His overall goal is to run the Boston Marathon, which has a cut-off time for entry - this year's was 3 hours 10 minutes, next year's is 3 hours 5 minutes. There will be a lot of training involved to make it to that point I think, but he's pretty tough so I wouldn't rule it out. Either way, running a marathon is something that nearly everyone could do if they trained, but very few people actually put in the time or the effort to make it happen - so kudos to Stephen for making the distance :)
The last few weeks have been pretty atrocious weather here - it rained nearly every day for 3 weeks. The weather stations were reporting statistics like "until the clouds parted Wednesday afternoon and a merciful sun briefly shone on Torontonians, 4 days had gone by since we saw it last. To make matters worse, of those bleak 96 hours, it rained for 68." So this was the weather Stephen was running in: 8 degrees and raining. I don't have any pictures of him actually running, but here's one from the local newspaper to give you an idea of the conditions:
The course started a long way north of the city and ran down Yonge St (the main north-south street in the city), west out along the lakeshore past our house to a turnaround point, and then back along the lakeshore to finish in Queens Park, near the city.
I ran my 5km run earlier in the day as part of my recovery from my stress fractures, and I finished in 29:40 after aiming for a sub-30, with no bone pain or issues, which was good. After my race finished, I hopped on the subway back home, showered and changed, and then Jax and I hopped back on the subway to get back to the finish line to see Stephen finished. When we got there at around the 3 hour mark, I saw a guy who'd overdone it - he fell flat on his face 100m away from the finish line, and his legs were so wobbly that he couldn't get up again. He seemed pretty delirious and he had to be supported to make it over the finish line - this made me more than a little worried about Stephen. Luckily Stephen was ok, and I caught up with him 2km from the end, jogging along with a smile on his face.
Stephen reported to me after the race that he started getting a sore knee at around the 16km mark, so he dropped back his pace a bit. It didn't get any better, but he finished the marathon with plenty left in the tank in a time of 3 hours, 37 minutes and 3 seconds - not bad for a first run. There are some fairly cool statistics for his run available here, including the fact that over the final 12km he passed 44 runners but was passed by 14, and when the winner of the marathon finished, Stephen was at the 30km mark with 12km left to go.
All in all, things went well, and he's looking forward to training for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on October 16th. His overall goal is to run the Boston Marathon, which has a cut-off time for entry - this year's was 3 hours 10 minutes, next year's is 3 hours 5 minutes. There will be a lot of training involved to make it to that point I think, but he's pretty tough so I wouldn't rule it out. Either way, running a marathon is something that nearly everyone could do if they trained, but very few people actually put in the time or the effort to make it happen - so kudos to Stephen for making the distance :)
Wow that's so impressive! I'd love to run a marathon, but the biggest thing would be making the time to train properly. Might try to do another half first :)
ReplyDeletecongratulations Stephen. Good luck with the next one. Take care Gordon and Heather
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