National Capital half marathon

So after doing my pee checking, for the male 10k winner of the National Capital race weekend, George Misoi of Kenya, who won for the second year in a row, in 28:30, on Saturday night, I rolled out of bed early Sunday to get to the Ottawa Hash House Harrier water station for the marathon. But back to the pee checking: for a couple of years my running group has supplied the volunteers to chaperone the top winners as soon as they finish and until they can deliver a urine sample for the anti-doping testing program. This does lead to a certain amount of jokes, and is a story in itself, but it is quite serious stuff, and even the Hash House Harriers treat it so.

Our water station was at the 7k point going out and the 15k point coming back. The weather had all of sudden turned quite warm, and even with the 7 a.m. start, runners were noticing the sudden heat. I took my XM Radio sateliite radio stuff and set up speakers to play bluegrass music really loud, which probably pissed off the nearby residents, like our Prime Minister, but no one came out of their dungeons to complain. All the water station volunteers and runners liked it.

After watering several thousand marathoners, I headed over to the race HQ to get ready for the half, starting at 10:15 a.m., and of course the increasing heat. It was going to 29 Celsius today.

Met a bunch of running friends as we were getting ready for the start, with some 7500 participants. Shant go through all the details, but it was warm, and I went through a huge amount of water, in and on me. For the relative lack of training, it went pretty well, and I finished with a chip time of 2:00:40, good enough for the top third of my age group, which was satisfying. About 12 minutes slower than my PB last year, but that goes to show what proper training does.