The training plan I’m using for my half marathon suggests tune up races at 3, 6, and 9 weeks from the goal race. The half marathon is on May 31st, so I was looking for a race on May 10.
I registered for the Sport Chek Mother’s Day Run/Walk without knowing too much about it. This race is HUGE – probably the biggest in Calgary, with almost 14,000 people. It started downtown, next to the Calgary Tower, and finished in Olympic Plaza (where they did medal presentations during the 1988 Olympics)
For the most part, the race was well organized. I thought that they should have been making more announcements at the start regarding where to line up. They did have pace signs, and had asked all the walkers to line up at the back, but thousands of people were oblivious to this information. This meant that my first km was spent dodging walkers and strollers. I was really worried about the last 2.5km where the 5K and 10K joined back up, but was relieved to see that they had the street divided, with lots of signs and volunteers keeping the two tracks separate.
My goal for this race was to finish in 57:00 which corresponds to a 9:10/mile (5:42/km) pace. That is the pace I need to do for a 2 hour half marathon (which is my goal in 3 weeks). I’m happy to share that I surpassed my goal and finished in 55:53! The kilometer splits broke out like this:
1km – 5:30
2km – 5:35
3km – 5:24
4km – 5:51
5km – 5:47 (divided – missed the 5km marker)
6km – 5:47 (divided)
7km – 5:24
8km – 6:04
9km – 5:39
10km – 4:49
There were some fairly significant hills on the course, so I think that’s one of the reasons some of the splits are quite a bit higher than others.
Obviously I’m happy with the result, but I’m not sure I’d do this race again. The field of participants is just so large that it overwhelms the space it takes place in.
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