Angus Glen 10 Miler Race Report

So things went according to plan.  Got to the race fairly early to stash my stuff.  They had lockers for everyone and not just crummy lockers that you would find at the gym.  These were nice and spacious.  This golf course hosted the Canadian Open back in 2007 and they have little name tags on top of each locker, presumably because this is the locker that the individual used.  My locker was used by Tag Ridings.  Ever heard of him?  I haven't either.  I ended up googling him and you can find information on him here. Weird thing is that he was born one day after i was.  Uncanny eh?

Vijay Singh locker was also just across from mine.  I thought that he won the tournament that year but apparently he came in second.  I did a little searching for Tiger Woods, but couldn't find it.  Apparently he didn't play that year.

So the plan was to do 10 miles first and then get back to do the 10 mile race for a total of 20 for the day.  I decided to head out for 5 miles and then turn around and come back.  First 10 mile route is here.  A couple of things I wanted to try.  The first was to to try and run with the camera phone in a holdster.  Ended up putting it in my waistband so that it fit into the small of back.  Here are a couple of pics from the first 10 miles.  The neighbourhood and houses are great looking.   If you're looking to buy a house, this one is for sale.  Close to a really nice park.

I wanted to time the first 10 mile run so that I would get back just as the race was starting.   I ended up getting back about 5 minutes before the race started which was good since I wouldn't cool down.  Another thing I wanted to try was to not have to use the restroom for the 20 mile run today.  I have only one fear in being the pace bunny in Ottawa and that is that I would have to stop to use the restroom at some point.  With my two pee break performance last week, i wanted to see if i could survive a 20 mile run with limited liquids and no requirement of a restroom break so I did not carboload or water load the day before. 

So the race starts.  Actually they had waves of starters which worked a lot better than I thought it would.  They had waves based on 10k times and everyone seemed to seed themselves correctly.  Being ever so meticulous, last night I had punched in a 8:45 pace for 10 miles into McMillan and got a 10k time of just over 52 minutes so I decided to start in the 49-52 minutes wave since i guessed everyone in that wave would be doing round 8:45 pace. 

The rest of the race went without incident.  I was trying to maintain an 8:45 pace, but most of the splits were slightly fast.  The course was really hilly.  The hills were short, but they were really steep.  I thought I had read somewhere that there would be a 5 mile timing mat, but there wasn't.  My plan was to run a negative split which I think I did, but I'm not entirely sure how much of a negative split cause the garmin didn't follow the course exactly and it read the course as being a bit short.  I tried to do an LT km right at the end, but there was a killer hill.  It was still my fastest km, but it was more like marathon pace.  Final time of 1:24:41 for an average pace of 8:28.  The course route is here.  They had a pretty good BBQ lunch afterwards. Angus Glen puts on a half marathon and 10k in the fall and they put out a good spread of food there also.

I didn't need to use the restroom during the race, but I was pretty dehydrated afterwards.  I drank one bottle of gatorade over the first 15 miles of todays run with the occasionaly extra cup of water handed out at the aid station.  My HR was higher than it normally would be for a long run.  This could have been do to a lot of things though as i ran 10 miles yesterday and didn't drink or eat a lot.  I got a whole bunch of pictures from the race today.  Some of them are below.