So I work for Scotiabank, and every year the bank does a “Rat Race” for United Way. The idea is that it’s a bunch of corporate big cheeses running a 5K through Toronto’s downtown financial core (although the route has changed a few times over the years). I’d only ever run it once before several years ago (I’m thinking circa 2006, but I’m not positive). This was long before I knew anything about running any kind of long distance seriously, what a “personal best” meant or that there was technology to track your racing times.
So when this popped up on an interoffice memo at work one day, I was like “Ooooo yes!” This race is basically a free entry race (5Ks generally cost about $35 to $50), but you’re expected to raise $100 in donations for the United Way which is the charity this race focuses on. Being the cat lover that I am, I knew I wanted to pick some kind of cat theme for my team. In an attempt to find an internet meme that wasn’t too difficult for people to understand, I went with:
And called our team “Staying Late To Catch the Red Dot”. It even made sense because he’s in a business suit and we’re staying late after work to run this race! I thought it was incredibly clever and his little faece makes me laugh whenever I look at it. So even though I had to explain it to everyone who joined my team or asked about the race, it was still worth it. Some of them thought I was talking about having my period. I even tried to make the meaning more clear at work:
Although I may have gone a little overboard! In the end, I managed to recruit 12 Rat Race team members from the office and we raised over $1400 for United Way.
On to the actual race…
I was really nervous for this one. REALLY nervous. Because my last 5K had gone so poorly, I was worried that maybe I was just naturally that slow and that there was really no use in working on my running times. Shitty mentality, but there you have it. This race felt very much like I needed to prove to myself that I could run faster than I had before and if I didn’t, I was going to be immensely disappointed.
This was a smaller race (under 2000 people) so there would be a lot more space to get around other runners if I needed to (unlike the disaster starting zone of the Ottawa Race Weekend 5K). I was also slightly worried about the 2k incline at the start of the race. The remaining 2k would be downhill, but it’s really nasty starting a race with an uphill incline like that for such a long stretch.
All 12 of us headed over to the starting line around 7 o’clock. Since most of us worked in the downtown core, it wasn’t a whole lot of hassle to get us out to the start line close to Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto.
The race started with very little fanfare, not even a starting gun bang, and we were off. As I’d said before, the first two kilometers of this race was a 25 meter incline up University Avenue until we hit Bloor Street. The start of any race is always the most unpleasant for me – everything always feels wrong. My breathing feels wrong – I feel out of breath and like maybe I’m not strong enough for the pace I’d set out for myself. I also managed to get a stitch in my side that didn’t help matters. But I just ignored it and tried to regulate my breathing a bit better. I really didn’t start to feel solid until I finished the incline at the top of Bloor Street when the ground evened out.
Oddly, the entire road wasn’t closed down for the race – only one lane was shut down so we had to maneuver around people through a single laneway of traffic. But with only 1500 people in the race, it didn’t make zigging and zagging too bad. I caught up with one of my team members at the 2k mark and whacked him on the shoulder (this is becoming a trend) to let him know I was there. Afterwards he told me that I set his pace and he just stuck with me after that to ensure he stayed on track. That was really nice to hear because I never really thought of myself as much of a pace setter. (I was, however, glancing constantly at my Garmin to make sure I was personally on track for a finish time under 27 minutes.) It’s also pretty rare to find a person that you can run beside at the exact same pace, so it was really nice to have the extra motivation whenever I got a glance of him over my shoulder.
As we finished the Bloor stretch of the race, we made a turn onto Yonge which (blissfully) was the downhill portion of this race. I could easily make up for any slowness on the uphill by pushing it on the downhill. The run down Yonge remains a blur in my mind except for the wayward pedestrians who would try to cross the street amongst the racers and the one very small child who jumped onto the street in front of me that I had to grab in order to steady him from falling over (including myself!).
As we made the last turn onto Queen Street and saw the finish line, my team member pulled ahead and started the sprint to the finish line. Once again, I couldn’t do that last sprint, and while that frustrates me, I’m content with the fact that it meant I was pushing for the entire race instead of just at the very end.
For once I finally managed to spot the clock time at the very end, which logged me in at 26:28. I knew I had started a bit further back from the start time so I knew the chip time would be shorter. The Garmin was logging me in at 26:13 so I was getting VERY excited to find out what my time was. When I checked online later, I discovered my chip time had clocked me at 26:10!!! OH HELLLLLL YES! A very solid 26 minute 5K, and a HUGE 75 seconds cut off my previous fastest 5K race (which had been in Baltimore, Maryland). I’m so close to being in the 25 minute range!
I hung around at the end of the race watch my other team mates finish. One super power woman on my team had done an INSANE 19 minute 5K, but the rest of them trickled in after me. For some of them this had been their first 5K race and I was excited to see that they were really happy to have done it and were looking forward to doing it again next year!
I was on such a high after this race – I was incredibly excited to have finished with a much better time than my last race and I’m on target for getting into the 25-26 minute range for a 5K. Having a solid race like that gives me so much more motivation to keep pushing myself every time I train.
Race Results
- Finish Time: 26:10 (new personal best)
- Pace: 5:14 per kilometer
- Overall placement: 390/1547
- Age group placement: Undefined
- Gender placement (F): Undefined