In a burst of annoyance with myself over a stupid soccer injury, I decided to sign up for the Toronto Half Marathon. At the time of me signing up it was March and I was like “oh please May is AGES away – I’ve got plenty of time to train!”. When I finally sat down and did my workback training schedule, I came to the horrifying realization that I had less than 6 weeks to train for this half marathon AND I had a shoulder injury. Hooo boy.

I basically dove headfirst into training after my last race (the Achilles St. Patrick’s Day 5K) and told myself there was no room for me to be lazy this time. Aside from the first half marathon I ever did (in the Czech Republic – read all about that race here!), I’ve been basically lazy AF about my half marathon training. I’ll train for one week, off for another, repeat. And while it WORKS, and I CAN run a half marathon without having to put much effort into training, the fact remains that I haven’t really sped up or gotten any better over the years I’ve been doing these races. My half marathon times range from two hours and seven minutes to two hours and eight minutes, without very much variation. And honestly, it’s the result of lazy training. Fundamentally you’re supposed to be running something like 5 times a week, but in the past I’ve generally relied on running twice a week. It doesn’t help that I play soccer, weightlift and recently went back to figure skating, so there’s a lot on my plate physically which gets in the way of training. That being said, all of these activities do HELP in some way, so they’re not totally detrimental.

The time around I was actually scared. I had a shoulder injury (that was healing well mind you) and I had very little time to get prepped for this race. So, for the first time in a long time, on top of all of my other activities, I committed to running three days a week, with the shortest single run in a week being around 9 kilometers. I was clocking around 35-40 kilometers a week and that’s easily the most I have ever done to train for a half. I love running long distance, but that much running training is super boring to me. However, the fear of failure kept me going and I completed all of the pre-race runs I set out to do… with one exception. I skipped my last long run the week before the race (a 16k run) and turned my usual one week taper (where you reduce your distance dramatically before a race in order to rest your muscles ) into a two week one. I had read in the past that a two week taper is sometimes better and I figured… let’s give it a shot.

I don’t know if it was all the consistent training, or the two week taper, or the extra physical activity I do… but I absolutely nailed this race. Every single time I looked down at my Garmin to check my pace I was in shock. I kept asking myself how was I running this fast? I was putting out a pace that I generally have during a 10K race and I wasn’t even tired. I wasn’t out of breath and I felt AMAZING. I kept expecting to hit a wall but 5k passed without issue, then 10k (I actually felt the best around 10k), then 15k…. and I still felt indestructible.

There was a brief moment around 18 kilometers where I looked at my Garmin and was like “wait a second, you’re not only going to absolutely MURDER your previous personal record, but you might actually be super close to two hours!”. It’s been my dream to get under two hours, but I’ve honestly never really had much motivation to work on speed training.

In the end, I tore through the finish line with a time of 2:01:20. This finish time was an incredible 5:49 minutes FASTER than my previous personal best which is absolutely unheard of for me. I usually go up and down by about a minute, never before I have I chopped off so much time in a race! While I must concede that a lot of the race had downhill segments, I have to say that there were some horrific uphills that sucked the absolute life out of you, so I really feel like they counterbalanced themselves. Plus, I not only beat the average female completion time (which was somewhere around 2:14:00) but I also beat the MALE average completion time (2:02:03)!

So if you couldn’t tell… I am over the moon about this race!

Race Results

• Finish Time: 2:01:20
• Pace: 5:45 per kilometer
• Overall placement: 1355/2956
• Age group placement (Female 30-39 years): 67/212
• Gender placement (F): 459/1392