Death Race 2007
October 4, 2007Not sure where to begin this (half-)marathon tale… with the hotel door that I broke in anger
or the last-minute pre-race surprise poop
or the drunks serenading our hotel room from the street at 3am
or I dunno. I just dunno.
Well, mebbe not the poop. That’d prolly be Too Much Information. But it was a surprise–there’s no getting around that. Only meant to pee when I got inside the port-a-potty at Metro Hall at 6:45am. Then I realized, oh agh, WTF? How come I didn’t hafta go half an hour ago at the hotel?! Oh well. Better here, now, than in my shorts, later. (You know that about running, right? It gives yer guts a real good shake. Shaky-shake. Turns everything to slush. One dares not fart, lest… well, you get the pitcha.)
…
Okay, for those of you who are still reading this… you diehards out there… the rest of the tale.
The drunks came before the door, so let’s start with them.
First of all, the hotel where my sister Chris and I stayed on Saturday night is right next door to a rather large pub. Near the U of T campus. On a street populated by frat houses. You can see where this is going, right? I hadn’t stayed there on a Saturday night before. Nobody will need to remind me to never do that again. That bad situation was compounded by the fact that it was Nuit Blanche in Tronna. And our hotel was located in one of the three “zones”. So that meant there were thousands upon thousands of “extra” people in the streets around the hotel. I turned in around 11pm and just lay there, listening to the people in the street. Who became louder, natch, the laterer it got and the drunkerer they got. There was some kind of singalong around 3am. It went on interminably. I buried my head underneath the pillow, conjuring up sheep to count. Quiet sheep. Some kind of mute sheep, I conjured. Then the door slamming commenced. Apparently, some of the drunken louts were staying in our hotel. And it didn’t occur to them that doors don’t hafta be slammed to be closed. Wham! Crash! Bang! Then sounds of partying next door. Wham! goes the door again. Crash! I whimper from underneath the pillow. Either the drunks eventually pass out or I do. Whatever the case, the next thing I know my alarm is going off at 5am. Oh joy, oh bliss, it’s race day and I have gotten about an hour and a half of sleep.
I drag my sorry ass outta bed and stomp over to the door to our hotel room. I open it about two feet and then fling it shut. Wham! I do it again. Crash! Wakey-wakey, drunky neighbours! Then I stomp off to the washroom to shower. When our cab arrives at 6am and we go to leave the hotel room, Chris goes to open the door and stops. She looks up. Then looks around at Little Miss ObliviousTM (me). She catches my eye and I look up.
This thing is hanging off the door jam, its six sizable screws ripped right outta the wooden door.
(If I’d had my wits about me, I’d've taken a photo of it hanging there like a broken arm. It was an awesome display of strength and stupidity all rolled into one. So it would’ve fit right in around here, wouldn’t it?)
“Oops. Me no know own strength.” My sister looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Me gonna hafta pay for that, betcha.” I raise my half-eaten banana over my head with one hand and thump my chest with the other. (Not really. Just said for effect.)
But the cab is waiting and so I will deal with it later. There is lotsa time to craft a suitable lie. So we squeeze out the door and take the cab down to the race start/finish at Metro Hall.
It’s a beautiful morning–clear and temperate. We wander around for a bit, I loosen my hip joints like Dave The Physiotherapist has taught me, and we go to the start corral. Port-o-potties line the road for half a block. I went before I left the hotel, but had been advised to try to go again 15 minutes before the race start. So I get in line. Still don’t feel like I hafta go. I wait. My turn. I take a breath before I open the door and then step inside. God, I hate these things. How long can I hold my breath? I go to pee, and… oh. Surprise. (I will say no more about that.)
Afterwards I tell my sis and we laugh. She echoes my “better now rather than later” theory.
Okay. Really. Enough of that.
At about 6:55, she gives me hug and wishes me luck and slips out of the runners’ corral. I have a dry (parched, actually) mouth and wish I had some gum or a drink of water. I put my iPod on (without turning it on just yet–I want to start the race without it) and wait for the start of the race. It’s scheduled for 7:00. I don’t hear the gun, but I do hear a roar of voices as folks cheer the race’s start. I am far enough back from the front-runners that I am still standing around, waiting, 5 minutes later. You see, the marathoners and half-marathoners all start at the same time, so there are about 12,500 of us standing there on Wellington, in the dark, shuffling from one foot to the other, shaking out stiffness, stretching, praying, de-stressing, whatever. Eventually the folks around me start to move. At a slow walk. I cross the start line at 7:07am.
This is what I don’t understand about chip-time versus gun-time. Why does the latter take precedence over the former? The gun went off at 7:00 but I didn’t actually cross the start line ’til seven minutes later. Why do those seven minutes count against me? Can anybody out there explain the sense of this?
The beginning of the race is along Wellington, through the canyon between the highrises of the Toronto financial district. The sun is just coming up, but we are running in the shadows of the towers on either side of the street. I run along the path between the streetcar tracks. I had been advised to start off nice and easy and not worry about all the people who’d be charging past me. So that’s what I did. And charge by me, they did! I didn’t let it trouble me. I was enjoying myself too much.
People line the red Scotiabank barricades that stand curbside and applaud everybody who runs past. Y’know, I hafta give a lotta credit to the people who come out to cheer on runners in a race like this. Their encouragement is genuinely heartening. They don’t know who the hell you are but they cheer for you anyway. When your name is on your bib (as mine was this time),
people–complete strangers, mind you!–will cheer for you by name and, corny as it likely sounds, it’s a huge and effective encouragement. I want to give them all a hug. This, coming from a misanthrope of considerable magnitude. Dig on that awhile.
The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront race is known for being a flat (and thereby fast) course…
(click the map to see the whole course)
There are a coupla overpasses on Lakeshore Blvd. and I’m here to tellya that they’re easy the first time you run over ‘em going outbound but not quite so easy the second time, coming back. The half-marathon runners start with the marathoners and we take the same course until a few kilometers before the end of the half, at which point the marathoners’ course diverges and continues on while the halfers gladly head to the finish line.
The first 12k are a breeze for me. I am smiling. I am singing along to my iPod. I am rubbernecking. I am enjoying myself immensely. And, despite the lack of sleep, I feel great! Hell, I don’t even stop for the first 8k. I slow down to get a drink at each water station, but I don’t walk for longer than it takes to gulp down the contents of the cup. Right around 8k, heading eastbound on Lakeshore, I start to see the elite marathoners returning towards downtown and (points well past downtown!). I am humbled by these athletes–they’re truly impressive to watch. They’re followed by the sub-elites and the quickest of the marathoners and halfers.
I am starting to wonder how close I am to the turnaround point. I really didn’t take too close a look at the map beforehand, but I thought we’d turn at Parkside Road, which runs along the east side of High Park. But I get to Parkside and see that I was wrong about that. We’re going on past Parkside. Okay. Must be the next cross-street where we hang a u-ey. But when I get to the next cross-street, that ain’t it either. Keep going. This happens, I think, a couple more times, and I am starting to wonder WTF. I take a minute’s walk-break at the 10k point where there is a water/Gatorade station. As far as I can see, I can see people running ahead of me. Meaning: the turnaround point still isn’t within my view. I am a bit perplexed but set out again. I am starting to feel somewhat less exhuberant than I have to this point. I think that miser’s sleep is starting to catch up to me (which couldn’t be very hard, seeing as I don’t run very fucking fast).
At last I come to Windermere and make the U-turn, hoorah! But, wow, it feels like I have just hit a wall. I am getting very tired. And thirsty. Very thirsty. Remember how I had a dry mouth before the race’s start? The cups of water and Gatorade between then and now have really not made a difference. And I’m sweating a lot. Too much, I think, for what is, really, quite a nice day for running. It’s not particularly hot or sunny or humid, but I am sweating and parched like I have a fuckin’ hangover. And there’s no way in hell I could have one of those. I have not been pushing myself unduly. I mean, I’ve not been doing anything that I haven’t done countless times before. So I hafta lay the blame on that short night’s sleep. I can’t think of anything else that might be the cause.
Anyway, it means that the trip back downtown is a helluva lot harder than the trip out. Again, I take a drink at each water station and walk all the way through each one. Soon, though, those pauses aren’t enough and I hafta stop in between water stations and walk a bit. This is all very unusual for me. I mean, on that 25k run I took a couple weeks before the race, I slowed to a walk 4-5 times total. The only good thing I can say about how I feel as I’m running at this point in the race is that at least my damned knee doesn’t hurt.
I didn’t tellya about my knee. Remember how I told you about how I incur jinxes whenever I have the nerve to mention something I have hopes for? Well, right after risking the wrath of the Great God Jinx by admitting that I had registered for this race, I came down with a knee injury. No kidding. It was, like, two days later. Unfuckingbelievable. So I spent the months of August and September making weekly visits to Dave The Physiotherapist. My training schedule went out the proverbial window (’cause I could no longer run as far as I was supposed to each week and I abandoned the speed & hill training I had just started) and I hadda just wing it. ‘Cause for a while there I couldn’t run more than 6-8k at a time. I’d be hobbled by that point, the outside of my left knee feeling like that damned midget had returned and was surreptitiously stabbing me in the other knee this time. So I went back to Dave and he bent and folded me just so and gradually my knee improved. Eventually, I was finding that the knee would hurt from kilometer 3 until about kilometer 6 or 7 and then it would work itself out and I’d be okay to keep running. Only my weekly long run would be outside. The rest of ‘em were on the treadmills at the Y because that was marginally easier on my knees.
As you can imagine, the state of my knees–later compounded by the state of my toes (don’t look here)–added stress to my race prep. Until I ran that 25k and could still walk the day afterward (albeit with a monstrous black toe), I honestly wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to run this race. And all my troubles started because I’d had the gall to actually mention my plans aloud here (so to speak). So I have (re-)learned that lesson and will go back to keeping my damned mouth shut when there’s something I’m hopeful about or shooting for.
So. The knee is quiet but those 8-9k on the backstretch are really wringing the sweat and energy outta me. The overpasses that were barely noticeable going out feel like the Contifuckingnental Divide coming back. I know I’ll be turning back north on Bay Street, but I can’t remember where it is–is it the next cross-street? No. Is it the next cross-street? No. Is it the next cross-street? No. Sweet jayzuz, is it the next cross-street? NO. Keep in mind that I am running along underneath the Gardiner Expressway–nice and shady but with a reputation for raining chunks of concrete onto the road below. That’d leave a mark, I fret. Finally–having distracted myself by focussing on the possibility of being nailed by a chunk of the Gardiner–I see people ahead of me turning onto Bay Street. At last! At last!!
Y’know how people talk about getting their “second wind” in endurance challenges of this sort? Well, that so-called second wind really woulda come in handy around the 12k mark when the “first wind” went outta my sails. But it doesn’t show up until closer to the 20k mark, when I round the corner from Bay onto Wellington and can see the finish line a few blocks ahead. I shake my exhaustion and the smile returns to my face. I run past hundreds of spectators who line the barricades and cheer and clap for all the runners. As I approach the finish line, I hear somebody on a loud-speaker announce my name and hometown and he adds “and she’s got her iPod on”. (Apple, you can email me and I’ll tell you where you can send my cheque.) I cross the finish line with a big shit-eating grin on my face.
Somebody puts a medal around my neck
while somebody else holds out a foil blankie, which I don’t want. I want “Water!” “Water?” I croak at a volunteer. “Right over there,” she points, and I make a beeline for what looks like a 50-foot-long series of tables covered in bottles of water. I grab two. Chug. Weave over to the other side of the road and slug back a cup of red Gatorade. (Yes, the flavour is “red”. It tastes “red”. I think it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. But I also think I might be a tad delirious.) Stagger back across the road and get another bottle of water, then start to make my way through the finish corral. Banana–check. Apple–check. Bagel–nah, I don’t think I could choke one down. Would really love a Freezie like they had at the Crim last year, but I don’t see anything like that. Damn.
Realllllllly want a Freezie.
Settle for the banana and the apple and the “red”-flavoured Gatorade.
As I am getting funnelled through the finish corral, I can feel the muscles in my calves and upper thighs starting to freak out a little. This is a first for me. I find a spot at some bike lockers and try to stretch the muscles. Oy vey. This hurts. I’m not used to this. Must’ve taken too much time between stopping running and starting the stretching. Beats me. Anyhow, Chris finds me and once my leg muscles stop throwing tantrums, she takes this:
I must admit that while I was in the throes of battling through those kilometers on the backstretch, I told myself I’d never hafta do this again. The same thought occurred to me as I tried to stretch the cramps out of my legs afterwards. But the next day… I thought, well, that wasn’t so bad. I could do that again. And next time, I will do it faster. 
…
Oh. And the lie? About the hotel door? Yeah, I came up with something. With help from my sis. Seems I’m not the only devious thinker in the fambly. 
