The Day Before the Race

The race is tomorrow! I can't stop thinking about it. My stomach is a little nervous.

Today we flew from Victoria to Edmonton. Apparently you are supposed to get your good night's sleep 2 nights before the race so that if you are too nervous to sleep the night before you are still okay. However, we had to get up at 4AM to make a 7AM flight this morning...so much for a good night's sleep. I'm so tired now I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping tonight though.

After we arrived in Edmonton, I went downtown to register. There is a big tent with everybody's name posted with their entry number. You tell a volunteer your number and they get your gear for you. My gear bag includes: a cool free polyester running shirt (nice!), an entry number to pin on my shirt (#943), and an RF ID tag that you clip to your shoe so your race time is accurate ("chip time" instead of "gun time"). I also got a free 500 ml of Running Room water and a Powerbar. All this before a single kilometer is run!

My strategy is to start off relatively slowly for the first kilometer (6 minutes for the first kilometer) then pick up to an easy pace (5:45-5:30/kilometer) for kilometers 2-9, and finish the last kilometer in 4:30 or faster. It will take some discpline to slow down at first because I suspect alot of people are going to start out too fast and be passing me at first, so the temptation will be to charge out after them. But I am confident that I will catch the majority of them, and I wasn't going to keep up with the ones I can't catch anyway.

Anyway, thats the plan. We'll see how it plays out once the racing starts.....