May 21, 2017
Exhausted after the summer of 2016 and my rough race at Maritime Race Weekend, I was in no hurry to do another marathon. I needed to rest and recharge. But it wasn’t long before I was making plans again.
I had previously avoided the Blue Nose Marathon because I loved the Cabot Trail Relay so much. The idea of running a race the weekend before the relay, especially a marathon, had no appeal for me. Racing is one thing, but when you’re part of a team effort, you want to be at your best, and I couldn’t imagine trying to perform well on the Cabot Trail on wobbly marathon legs.
As fate would have it in 2017, however, my team was left out of the relay after missing the cut in its lottery team selection process. I was totally bummed out about that but, as the reality of it sunk in, I decided to seize the opportunity. This would be the year I would run the Blue Nose!
Although still a relatively new thing (it started in 2004) the Blue Nose has become “the big one” among Maritime running events, often drawing more than 10,000 participants to Halifax for the May long weekend. I’m not one for big crowds, but I knew I wanted to do the marathon there at least once.
For training, I decided to go back to a more familiar program, but to attack my workouts with a little more intensity. I felt I had the tools to put together a great race, but had just not been able to make it happen yet.
With the Blue Nose taking place in the middle of spring, it means you’re going to have plenty of winter weather in the early part of your training. I seem to recall having a lot of difficulty that winter, with poor conditions leading to some missed workouts. But, overall, I felt pretty good throughout.
I did very little in the way of racing leading up to this marathon, as there is not much available early in the year. I did run the Hypo Half in Moncton in February, but did not start training in earnest for the Blue Nose until after that. In March I took part in the Moose Run, a 25K race through a hilly, windy course in the Cow Bay area, covering much of the same ground as my last marathon at Maritime Race Weekend. It was a challenging race, and I loved it.
I was feeling great as I packed up with my family in April and headed to Florida for a two-week vacation. I was a bit apprehensive about training down there because of the heat. On previous vacations in the Sunshine State, I had done all of my running on a treadmill at the resort where we were staying. But this time I would be there during the peak of my training, and there was no way I was going to put myself through 30-32K long runs on a dreadmill.
My solution was to get up as early as I could, and head out at the crack of dawn.
I still had the swampy humidity to deal with, but the heat would hopefully be bearable until later into the runs. I had some warm ones, but I got them all in.
I got back home in time for my taper, and felt ready for the Blue Nose.
For race weekend, I headed to Halifax without Marlene and the kids. It would be my first marathon without having at least my wife around. I was fortunate, however, to have the hospitality of my Aunt Nita and Uncle Wayne, who lived in Bedford and offered me a place to stay.
Not only that, but Uncle Wayne, a bus driver, also offered his chauffeur services to me and his daughter Brittany, who was running the half. I can’t speak for other runners, but I know it takes a big load off my mind on race day when I don’t have to worry about dealing with traffic, or making a wrong turn, or finding a place to park. It’s so great to be able to just relax all the way to the start line.
As her start time was a half hour behind mine, cousin Brittany and I parted ways at the Scotiabank Centre, and I headed out with the rest of the marathoners to Sackville Street. It was a beautiful morning in Halifax, and I was pumped for the race, but still relaxed enough to be focused on the job ahead.
As I looked around the start line, I saw previous winners like Wieczorek, MacLennan and Hipson ready to go, while the amazing Chris Anderson danced around to the music, like it was just another day at the park. We shared smiles, I shook his hand and wished him all the best.
As the horn sounded and we headed out, I clearly remember being hit with this thought: “Oh my God, I have to pee already!” Somehow, the urge passed.
For this race, I made a concerted effort at controlling my pace, even more so than in previous marathons. I decided to break it up into four 10K-ish sections. For the first section, I decided to go at a five-minute pace, and then speed up to 4:50 for the second section, 4:40 for the third, and then whatever I could muster for the last 12K.
One challenge that came with this approach was the new GPS watch I had received for Christmas, and had been training with ever since. While I liked the device – a Polar M200 – I couldn’t seem to get it to measure my pace the way I wanted it to. I had previously run with the Nike app on my phone, which told me my average pace after each kilometer. That always seemed to work great for me. But this new Polar watch could only seem to tell me what my “current” pace was.
This was a problem, especially in hilly Halifax, where you’re not likely to keep to a steady pace for long. The result was that I was constantly checking my watch, and either speeding up or slowing down like a yo-yo, to try and keep to where I wanted to be. I tried to just trust my body and not worry about it.
I felt great during this race, and everything seemed to go well. Those long training runs in the Florida heat and humidity helped toughen me, making the cool spring air in Nova Scotia a welcome treat.
I also love Halifax, and enjoyed the course. Unlike the previous year, when I went to Fredericton over-confident after being told how flat and “easy” the course was, I went into this race prepared for the worst, as people had told me the course was really tough. I was pleasantly surprised to find it not near as bad as I expected.
Yes, there is some hilly terrain. Halifax is built on a big hill, after all. But I don’t recall many huge ones. The only one that seemed to really slow me down was the climb up the Serpentine Trail in Point Pleasant Park, especially the second time around.
Twice? Yep. The year I ran the Blue Nose was one of the years the Macdonald Bridge was closed for construction, so the marathon course did not include a bridge crossing or a Dartmouth section. Instead, it kept to the Halifax side of the harbour, and was essentially two loops of the half marathon course.
It would have been nice to experience the bridge and Dartmouth, but I was pretty happy with the course. It was a lot of fun running through downtown, past the dockyards, onto Upper Water and Hollis Streets, areas normally busy with traffic but for this day closed to vehicles.
The winner that day was Greg Wieczorek, his fourth time breaking the tape at the Blue Nose. (A year later, I hired him as a coach. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em :)
I kept to myself for most of the race, and didn’t see many familiar faces, although I did see my old schoolmate Joanna Swinimer, who was a course volunteer in the Point Pleasant section. She even ran along with me during my first jaunt up the Serpentine, and gave me some nice encouragement.
While the Wall awaited me as always during the late stages of the race, I seemed to hold it off better than I had in any of my previous marathons. I only remember the last few kilometres being a real struggle. In fact, I crossed the finish line and, amazingly, did not feel like I had been pulled through a knothole. That was a marathon first for me.
I finished the race at 3:22:53, a new PB for me, beating my Fredericton time by about four minutes. I was pretty happy with that, knowing that very few considered the Blue Nose to be a PB course.
One thing that did concern me, however, was that my GPS was only reading 41K when I crossed the finish line. I couldn’t imagine why that would be. I followed all the signs on the course, and it seemed pretty straightforward. When I got home and looked at my run on Strava, I called up the course map on the Blue Nose website and compared the two. I could not see anything wrong with my run.
It was my first marathon with the new GPS watch, and I knew it wasn’t a top line piece of equipment. I decided it must have failed somehow. Regardless of what the watch said, I knew I ran a great race, and felt good about my performance.
Fast forward about five months. I was jotting down some notes for my “running scrapbook” and I couldn’t remember my exact time at the Blue Nose. So, I went to the Sportstats results page to look it up. To my surprise, my name wasn’t listed in the results anymore. What the hell?
Then I found a search bar on the page, and entered my name. Sure enough, my result came up, but with a “DQ” beside it. My heart sank. How could this be possible? Looking a little more closely, I saw that I was missing one of the split times in my results. Specifically, I was missing the halftime split.
Once again, I called up my run on Strava, and, once again, I compared it to the course map on the Blue Nose website. I still wasn’t seeing where I had gone wrong. I zoomed in and traced my entire race, kilometer by kilometer, and still wasn’t seeing a problem.
Ready to contact Sportstats to demand an explanation, I decided to dig a little deeper. This time I looked on Strava at one of the other marathoners who ran the Blue Nose that day, and traced their run, kilometer by kilometer, just like I had with my own. There I finally discovered where I had gone wrong.
Because the marathon route that year was two loops of the half marathon course, the marathoners were required to pass through the finish area at the halfway mark of the race. Because I am an idiot and did not study the route closely enough beforehand, I did not realize this during the race. Instead of turning right onto Cogswell Street as I neared the halfway point of the race, I kept going straight onto North Park and Agricola. I thought runners were only supposed to turn towards the finish area on the second loop.
I felt horrible at this realization. In an instant, the race I was most proud of had suddenly turned into one that I was embarrassed about. My PB had become a DQ.
It took me awhile, but I eventually let myself focus on the positives that came out of that race. I tackled a variety of terrain, and felt great throughout. Normally a mess of sore muscles and aching joints for days after a marathon, I recovered quickly and felt strong again in no time after this one. This couldn’t have been because I had only run 41K that day instead of 42.
I figure that the extra kilometer would have added about five minutes onto my time, giving me a still respectable 3:27 finish. Not a PB, but a decent race.
Someday I will take another crack at the Blue Nose and wipe the asterisk off this one. For now, I will have to settle for having it as my “41K PB.”
Meanwhile, here is a great montage video of the event from the Blue Nose folks. Look for me at around 2:46 :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99oCeb2jNog&sns=fb&fbclid=IwAR3b0q-KNvFiRhHU9q117A450oJerW5Ny9qMQI6cViE4ypORrqCmHrIkrj4 .
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