20 Mile Drop - One of the worst weather condition!
Freezing rain, strong wind, numb hands/fingers.
These pretty much sum my race experience at the 20 Mile Drop in Fairport Harbour today.
This race was part of the Lake health running series. I was looking for a marathon on this weekend (April 13/14) but I could not find one close to home. So, I signed up for this race as it's at least a 20 miler, which I wanted to do as part of my long run.
The day before the race I went out and ran 19 miles on the trail with D. (aimed for 4 hours and we ended up doing 4.5 hours). My legs felt fine but tired. I thought this would be a good back-to-back long run weekend after missing 2 weekends in a row due to work.
The race started at 7:15am. It's a point-to-point race where the runners got shuttled to another town and ran back to the finish line where we parked. The buses left the finish line at 6:30. We had to wait at the start line about 30 minutes. Some waited in line for the porta potty. Luckily, someone opened a building in the middle of the square so we could get inside to wait.
Overall, it was one of the worst weather condition races. I felt like I could have done better had it been nice and sunny. Perhaps, I need a redemption race next year?
Sydney
These pretty much sum my race experience at the 20 Mile Drop in Fairport Harbour today.
This race was part of the Lake health running series. I was looking for a marathon on this weekend (April 13/14) but I could not find one close to home. So, I signed up for this race as it's at least a 20 miler, which I wanted to do as part of my long run.
The day before the race I went out and ran 19 miles on the trail with D. (aimed for 4 hours and we ended up doing 4.5 hours). My legs felt fine but tired. I thought this would be a good back-to-back long run weekend after missing 2 weekends in a row due to work.
The race started at 7:15am. It's a point-to-point race where the runners got shuttled to another town and ran back to the finish line where we parked. The buses left the finish line at 6:30. We had to wait at the start line about 30 minutes. Some waited in line for the porta potty. Luckily, someone opened a building in the middle of the square so we could get inside to wait.
It started to rain not long after we took off. First, we had to run two loops around the square before we took the road. The race was advertised as mostly downhill for 20 miles and that attracted many runners. The first 5 miles went by pretty uneventfully.
Because it was raining the whole time while we were on the course and I did not have the right pair of gloves on, my hands and fingers were numb to the point that I could not move them or even hold the cup. At mile 8, I struggled and had to slow down to walk while shaking my hands to make the blood flow to the fingers. I stopped at the water stop between Mile 11-12 to ask for help. The volunteers helped take out my wet gloves and put on 2 layers of plastic gloves on both of my hands. I felt better than started running again.
The 2nd half of the course was mostly downhill but I couldn't feel the "drop" as much because I was too worried about keeping my body and hands warm. My pace was slower than the first half but it was consistent. During the last 2 miles, it started to rain more heavily but we were almost done so all I focused on was to get to the finish line as fast as I could.
Overall, it was one of the worst weather condition races. I felt like I could have done better had it been nice and sunny. Perhaps, I need a redemption race next year?
Sydney
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