Fall Classic
Last, last weekend (Nov.15), I ran in my first huge, major, official race! It was called the Fall Classic - the Last Great Run of the Year. It offered 3 distances: 5k, 10k, and a half marathon, and it was located on the University of British Columbia campus.
A view of the campus on a nice day with down-town Vancouver and Stanley park in the background.
It's a beautiful place to run, and although the weather looks great in the photo above, it was not so great on race day! (But I shouldn't complain, because it got a lot worse just after we finished the race!)
I ran the 10k distance. When I first moved to Vancouver, I decided to join a near-by running group in order to get back into the habit of running regularly. So mid-September, a group of about 10 of us started training together about 2-3 times per week. As the weeks wore on, the group dwindled down until race day, when only 5 of us actually ran the race.
A total of about 2,700 people showed up total for all 3 distances. Almost 900 people ran the 10k with me!
All the training totally paid off! My goal was to finish under an hour - that would mean a pace of less than 6 min./km. In the end, my personal time was 58:47.8 at a pace of 5:53/km (but my official clock time was 1:00:16, because it took me about a minute and a half to just get up to the starting line after the clock started). But I was super happy with my time, and a couple hours later it didn't even feel like I just ran a 10k - I could've done another one!! :)
Looking all official with my bib!
Yay! My first one!
Haha, we had live entertainment afterward - an Elvis impersonator!
I'm taking a couple weeks off from training, but still keeping up with running for now. After Christmas, I plan to start training for a half marathon! We'll see how that goes! :)
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