Today I ran the Royal Air Force Half-Marathon as a pace bunny. I hadn’t planned on running this one but they needed a 2:30 pace bunny so I figured why not.
Being a pace bunny is fun! Although I didn’t have many customers. I ran with a couple of people who had ran the full in Fargo last weekend, someone who had an injury and a fellow from 14 Wing Greenwood who had been sort of volun-told to come out to Winnipeg and run. He’d been training for a 10k so this was surprise half-marathon for him :P
The first five km were hilarious and miserable. It started raining hard just before we started and the winds must have been gusting to 70km/h. At one point I had to stop and tie my shoe and the wind knocked me over. And when we were running on the tarmac I was having considerable trouble just moving forward into it.
The “To Finish” bunny caught up to us and joined our group, although there were probably still 5 or 6 people stretch out behind.
Once we got onto Ness and Hamilton things were much better and the rain mostly stopped. At about the half-way point, most of my group pulled ahead (including the To Finish Bunny) and then it was just me and the fellow from 14 Wing.
The turn around point was in front of my high school! John Taylor Collegiate represent!
At mile 10, my running companion had to drop back (he eventually finished around 2:40).
I finished a bit slow (2:31:47) because we’d been running too fast most of the race so I slowed down for the last three miles. I guess my GPS was a bit out because when I got to 2 miles left, I checked my time and then set a pace to finish at more or less 2:30 on the nose. I didn’t feel too bad, though, since there was no one following me :P
I was thoroughly soaked and as soon as I stopped moving I began to shiver. Today felt much colder than the Hypo Half :P
