I posted a blog entry in August announcing my goal of participating in the Victoria Half-Marathon. Today was the big day; I woke up at 6:00 p.m bought some McDonalds and drove downtown for the run. The route was very scenic, but by the half way point, I became too focused on completing the race to notice.
This was my first marathon, here’s some important lessons I learnt:
- The lines to the porta-potties were INSANE. Drinking coffee in the morning before the race is not such a good idea
- I started somewhere in the middle at the start and I found that passing people is very hard especially at the beginning. Starting more at the front would have improved my finish time.
- If you do have to pass people, side walks are your friend.
- The last 5km feels like 10km and the last 1km feels like 3km.
- Wearing a watch seems useful at first glance, but thinking about it afterwards, I am glad I didn’t wear one. At certain points in the race, I worried that I was going too slow and might not finish in time. Not knowing my time made crossing the finish line very suspenseful, but at the end this suspense turned into joyous satisfaction.
After a grueling 21km, I am very happy to announce that I managed to complete my goal of finishing the half-marathon in 1h and 30min or less. My final time was 1h and 45:53 minutes (CTRL+F ‘Fred Song’).
838 583/1914 M 69/139 Male 20-24 9295 50:50 1:48:09 1:45:53 5:02 Fred Song Victoria BC CANADA
Working to accomplish this goal has been a great experience for me and actually completing it has given me a lot of confidence. Perhaps I’ll test myself in a full marathon sometime in the future. For now, I will try thinking up another goal to push and challenge myself.