Georgina 10 Miler

Sutton ON

Bib # 125

Chip time: 1:28:11

Official time 1:28:12

Pace 8:50/mile

Place 30/55

Gender Place 12/31

Category Place 4/9

 

It's taken me a little bit to get around to writing this recap, I've been super busy with work and family life the past week.....

 

Normally I try to live by the rule that you don't register for a race that will take you less time to run than it will to drive to, but Patty wanted to run the Georgina 10 miler for her birthday so I said that I would join her. I don't really know the northern part of the GTA (at all), but figured how bad could it be......

 

I hooked up with Patty at 6am and we made our way out to Sutton after I gave her the running skirt that I had bought her for her bday. FYI, she is lucky that I left buying her gift until the last minute or else I would have kept it for myself and gotten her something else! Once I got it home I tried the skirt on and it looked super cute on me! :oD We arrived in Sutton around 7:30am, got our bibs and old school Velcro ankle timing chips and waited around to meet up with Patty's friend Erin. There didn't seem to be many people out running this race but I was able to do some serious people watching in the small crowd any way. The first person who caught my eye was a woman wearing jean shorts and a cotton t-shirt. We thought she may be a 5K walker. Then I spied a young guy in a pair of Coors Light swimming trunks doing high leg kicks for warm up. And then along came the pièce de résistance ..... another young man in swimming trunks but this one had a mullet! Business in front, party in the back, yeehaw! At about 7:55 we noticed that the crowd had still not made it's way to the starting line.....Hey! Where was the starting line anyway?!?! Ten minutes later a woman got on the loud speaker and decided to get this party started with a little zumba. Um, maybe we should skip the zumba and get the race started seeing as it's already late? No? Ok, what do I know any way? Finally the zumba ended and we made our way to the starting area. A driveway with a mat laying across it. Way to stand out!! A lady then came up and told us that she was a volunteer with the police department and would it be ok if she took our photographs? This race was really going all out!!! Finally around 8:20 two girls from Sportstats yelled go and apparently the race started. Getting permits to close the roads must not have been in the race budget (among many, many other things) so for safety we mainly ran on the sidewalks during the downtown portion of the run. The first of 4 water stations quickly came upon us but seeing as we had pretty much just started the race we declined. I did take the time to notice that they were serving both water & Gatorade which I was happy to see because I didn't bother to bring a gel with me. Normally I wouldn't take one for a race this distance but after running a hard 5K race the weekend before and being sick all week I wasn't sure how I'd be feeling later on in this race. Eventually we turned toward the lake and made our way into the 'boonies'. I was quickly noticing that running a race this small was very hard on the race mojo. I literally felt like I was only running a hard long run and to be honest I wasn't enjoying it. There were times where you didn't see any other runners at all and barely any spectators. The second water table came up and I thought I might like some Gatorade but they only had water. Boo. Why would they have it at the first station and not this one? Oh well. On we ran occasionally chatting and both feeling the effects of the Moon in June the weekend before. The scenery was very nice on this route, I will give them a plus here. The lake was beautiful and the homes along there were very nice. Soon enough the third water station was coming up and I was starting to find that running a 5:30/km pace was feeling much harder than it should be. Normally 5:30/km is comfortable for me to hold, but during this run my legs were very heavy. Again I looked for Gatorade and again I didn't see any and I was starting to regret not bringing a gel with me. Shortly after this water station we realized that we had taken a wrong turn. Where we should have turned into a park we had stayed on the road. Thankfully I noticed that the woman that had been running in front of us was no longer there before we had gone too far. We quickly turned back and Patty asked the woman who was standing on the corner with her kids why she didn't tell us that we went the wrong way. "Other people went that way too" she said. Turns out the whole lead pack missed the park as well and missed running a whole km of the route! Who was in charge of this race?!?! We eventually made our way up to a main road and started clicking down the final km's. Once again the race's inability to have any road closures made running the race a little dangerous. We ran along a busy road on the gravel shoulder while cars whizzed by at 80km/hr! At this point I could not wait for this race to be over! With one km to go we finally passed the last water station, fully stocked with Gatorade!! (It turns out that the Gatorade had been stolen from the middle two stations!!) Neither one of us wanted to bother with a  drink and just concentrated on finishing up. As we made our way down the final street mullet boy whizzed past us and his friend in the long sleeve shirt & tights (dude, aren't you roasting?!?!) told us that it was his first race. Damn youth! Off in the distance we could see the park and Erin (she finished 11th!!) was on the street corner cheering us in. We crossed the finishing line and both thought thank God that's over! We went and got our medals, snacks and race kits full of random stuff that I think that they may have gotten at Dollerama and laughed at the absurdity of this race. Then to top the day off the lady in the jean shorts went running by towards the finish line.

 

 

 

I'd probably have to mark this down as the most ghetto race that I've ever been involved in, and after the 2.5 hour drive home I am left praying that Patty finds something a little closer to home to run for her birthday next year!