Ottawa Race Weekend

A little late, but better late than never.
 

Well we did it.. We did it on May 26, 2012.  Valerie and I competed in and completed our first ever 10k race.  What a great experience.  There thousands upon thousands of runners flooding the streets of Ottawa.  The spectators lined the course from the start line all the way to the finish cheering on all the runners. 



Valerie and I waiting for Alana to complete the Ottawa 5k race



Valerie and I had a goal to finish in under 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Although we expected our starting position to be fairly far back in the corral of runners, we would never have anticipated the crowd we saw.  It was overwhelming and truly an amazing sight. We both wished we had a camera to capture the magnitude of it.  The sea of runners was so great that it actually took us 6 full minutes from when the start pistol went off to get to the start line.  And then we were off.

We had a great time.  The weather was hot, and the crowd caused for some difficult running conditions.  We are by no means the fastest runners, but we were constantly having to dodge and pass people throughout the entire course which caused us to expend more energy than we would under normal circumstances. 

Our official chip time shows that we finished the race in 1:13:15... Our next goal is to complete the Montreal Oasis 10k on September 23, 2012 in under 1 hour 10 minutes... Challenge, accepted!