A Midsummer Night's Run

This was it. The race that was SUPPOSED to be my goal race for the season.
In May, when Denise and I attended the Expo at Mississauga Marathon, we saw the booth for the Midsummer Night's Run, and both exclaimed that we had ALWAYS wanted to do that run.

The next thing you know, we were both signed up to run the 30km ( a new distance for me), and my Mom was signed up to walk the 15km.

We're very spur of the moment, we three. We hadn't even run the 10km race Denise and I were there to run!

That quickly led to us realizing that we would be running the 30km race at the exact weekend we would need to in training for the Montreal Marathon.  Clearly, the only sane thing to do at that point was to sign up for that race too!

August came quickly, and found us all assembled in McCleary Park in Toronto, Ontario, ready to race.  As always there are the pre-run jitters, but the weather was great, and spirits were high.

Midsummer Night Run has Pace Fairies, which really, is awesome.  A whole bunch of runners wearing fairy wings, holding signs displaying the time that they will get you into the finish at. Denise and I were "only running it as a training run", so we looked for the 3:30 continuous Pace Fairy. I looked to my right and saw the 3:15 continuous Pace Fairy and said to Denise "I think that's Ed Mark".

Ed is the events guy for our Running Room district and attends most of our Sudbury races to help out.

Sure enough, it was Ed, who was hands down the most spectacularly dressed Pace Fairy.  Kudos to him for running 30km in that outfit!

Midsummer Night's Run really is a nice race. The terrain changes a few times throughout and at times I found that difficult, particularly the many speed bumps. After those, my hips and groin were pretty unhappy.

To be honest, I struggled throught the last 7km.  Thankfully, Denise kept me going, albeit much slower.  It was definitely challenging running in the dark, from a psychological perspective.  At least when you are running on your home turf, even in the dark, you have a good sense of where you are.

I just found it so hard to not be able to see.  I definitley see the value of taking a look at the course before you run it, especially in that situation.

At any rate, reach the finish we did, in 3:23:22, still well under our hard goal of under 3:30, but short of our soft goal of 3:15.

If I were to the analyze the factors that didnèt go my way in the race, I would say I definitley wore the wrong shoes, and that I might have better prepared myself mentally for the dark part of the course. Additionally, I did not properly fuel myself with the right nutrition throughout the day, so I am going to work on that before the big race for sure.

My Mom finished the 15km walk in 2:33:32, and I am insanely proud of her.  This was only her second event, and it was three times as long as the first event she walked.  Circumstances meant that she had not trained much in the final weeks leading up to it, but she still rocked an average pace of 10:14 per km! That's AWESOME!

A nice touch was the prefilled stainless steel water bottles at the race finish.  Eco Friendly, reusable, and full of cool water! All in all, we had a great time.  Also, we must not forget the Steamwhistle beer garden and the fab BBQ food.  I'd definitley recommend this race!

Jes