Maritime Race Weekend: Tartan Twosome 2013

Normally I post my training re-cap on Mondays, but since this weekend my training was held at the Tartan Twosome, you can count this as my re-cap from last week 😉

Way back in February I signed up for the Maritime Race Weekend Tartan Twosome which consisted of a Sunset 5K on Friday night, and a Sunrise 10k (there were also 5K, Half and Full Marathon options as well) Saturday morning.  The races are run in Eastern Passage right along the shore which would make for a beautiful run at both sunset and sunrise, you know, if we hadn’t been in the middle of a tropical storm…

All week long we were threatened with Tropical Storm Gabrielle trying to ruin our fun, and I was concerned the Friday run would even be cancelled.  Thankfully it wasn’t so Friday afternoon J and I headed into the city to our hotel.  We stayed at the Ramada in Burnside (which was the official hotel for the race).  It was my first time staying there and it was a lovely hotel.

But back to the races.  Maritime Race Weekend is a pirate themed race so of course I had to get a couple pirate costumes together for the weekend.  Pirate tutus are the best!

and my attempt at a pirate pose.  #fail

It was raining, but only really drizzle when I left the hotel but I didn’t want to get any wetter than necessary before the race (what a joke that turned out to be!) so I wore my jacket

oddly enough even though I was wearing a tutu in public, I was more self conscious about the fact that I was wandering around with that jacket on (which was totally out of place).

Anyway, I made it to Eastern Passage and parked about 1km from the start line.  I had friends who had got there early and I knew I could leave my jacket and stuff in their car so I wore it down to the race site.

In true Suzi fashion, I had barely started the walk when it started raining.  Hard.  By the time I made it there I was drenched and couldn’t even see straight because there was so much water in my eyes.  And my poor tutu.  She was looking pretty sad.  When I met up with Debbie she was totally dry and took one look at me a burst out laughing.  Who could blame her?  I looked like a drowned rat!

Luckily the rain died down before the race started so I didn’t get a second drowning!

Laura was so kind as to pick up my race kit for me Thursday night so I met up with her for our traditional pre-race photo and to get my kit.  Aren’t we cute??

And then…we were off!

Debbie and I joked about the beautiful ocean sunset view as we ran because it was dark and rainy and foggy and we could barely even see the water!  I don’t think it was super windy, but when we turned at the halfway mark you could certainly feel a change not having rain beating on you.  The rain did stop and I found it got pretty humid, but that could have just been me in my waterlogged clothes getting hot 😉  The route was pretty flat but for while a while was pretty packed so it was hard to get passed people.  Near the end it thinned out enough to be comfortable which was nice.

Debbie’s husband managed to get this shot of us nearing the finish line.  We look pretty happy, but that’s mostly because we thought we were only seconds from being done.  In actuality we had to run a loop around to the finish line so we were probably another minute or so from being done. 

and we’re done! Chip time: 31:58.  Not a PR but I wasn’t expecting one in a tropical storm!

A better shot of Friday’s hardware

and an “after” shot of my tutu.  It didn’t look too bad considering how soaked it got!

I was so glad I brought two pairs of sneakers with me.  I would have been foul if I had, had to wear an already wet pair Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we got up much too early for my liking (5:45am) and had breakfast before heading back for round two.  

New day, new tutu 😉

It wasn’t raining but it was pretty dang foggy. 

such a shame, it would have been beautiful if not for the fog

And of course another pre-race shot with Laura!

As for the 10K, it was mostly flat except for one l-o-n-g gradual hill that was killer.  I much prefer steep hills that I can just sprint up, but this sucker was too long for that nonsense.  Ugh.  And then I think time stopped completely.  It felt like we’d been running forever when at the last water stop they said, “Only 2km to go!!!” Wait, what?  Two more kilometres?  It felt like we’d already run at least 9!  Of course the fog didn’t help because you couldn’t really tell where you were.  

I was getting tired.

I took a couple extra walking breaks and then told myself to just suck it up and run the rest of the way.  My clock time was 1:06:0X (not sure of the second) and my 10K PR was 1:05:59 from the BLuenose.  I knew right then that I had PR’d because we were at least 30 second back from the start when the clock started.  

Chip time: 1:05:18.  Say what?  A PR of 41 seconds?  I’ll take it!  

And a shot of all my blingtastic pirate gold! 😀

The one on the far left is actually a belt buckle 😉

I celebrated my new PR later that afternoon with a super delicious ice cream from Laura Secord.  Fantastic.

So there you have it!  I went, I tartan twosomed and then came home.  All in all it was a pretty fun weekend {if of course you block out all the complaining I did during the actual races 😉 }