BMO Marathon Race Report

 

The last six months have been all about running, and I haven’t written anything about it because I was starting to feel superstitious. Getting to the BMO start line was uncertain thanks to injury, and I didn’t want to write about something that I wasn’t completely sure I could do. And then, when I finally made my ‘come hell or high water’ decision, I didn’t want to jinx it.

So, let’s back up to December and the Gunner Shaw 5K, which was the first in a series of races I did before the BMO. This one had been on my radar for years. It’s a cross-country race around Jericho beach and trails… in December. Meaning rain, puddles, and slippery mud are guaranteed. Near the end, there’s an epic—well, you can’t call it a puddle. It’s a pond, about 25 meters long and knee-deep (for me), and yeah, you have to run through it.

The Gunner Shaw is as much an obstacle course as it is a race, and it was exactly as fun as I’d anticipated. I hope to do this one every year.

Buoyed by my success in that race, I moved on to the Steveston Icebreaker, an 8K race in early January. I was determined to break 40 minutes, and I did, but it came at a cost. I strained my left hamstring, which left me training through pain to make it to the start line of the First Half, a half-marathon in early February.

Thanks to snowy and icy conditions, the race almost didn’t go ahead (which, let’s be honest, I was hoping for). But they altered the course to keep it safe, and off I went, gritting my teeth through pretty much all 21K. It was nasty, but I survived, and my hamstring wasn’t worse.

Slowly, through strength work and physio exercises, the hamstring injury improved—though it never went away, and it caused other compensatory issues. As I stared down a 25K training run, I knew I had reached a decision point. If I could make it through that, the marathon would be a go. If I couldn’t, I’d have to consider scaling back to a half, which I really didn’t want to do. I had first signed up for the BMO in 2020 when, thanks to Covid, it got canceled. The Victoria Marathon was on my schedule for 2023 but a concussion kept me from doing that one. I did NOT want to back out of this.

The 25K run went well enough for me to commit to the marathon. But my training overall was not what I’d hoped for. I couldn’t do any speed work and for a while no hills either (ha, great for the BMO which has SO MANY HILLS). But the one thing I could do was long slow distance. My longest training run was 37K, which was a game-changer—something I know from my IM marathons where I’d never put in that distance and had paid for it at the end. I trained through both pain and Biblical downpours, which in the end was good. I knew I could endure pretty much anything the race might throw at me.

Race day exceeded all expectations. Vancouver puts on a stellar event, and the weather couldn’t have been better. I was nervous leading up to the day but managed to sleep well the night before and woke up ready, excited, and pretty emotional that I was actually doing it. So much had gone into getting there. Whatever happened during the race, the fact that I was starting was already a win for me.

I had a plan—well, two plans. One was realistic, the other optimistic, and both depended on how I was feeling as the race proceeded. But the first part of my plan was to head out slowly. A lot of people burst out of the gate and pay for it later (we’ll come to that). I’d run the course a number of times in training and knew that it began with a hill which I’d always run slowly. But somehow (the taper? the carb-loading? race day adrenaline?) I had trouble slowing myself down. I had to intentionally rein it in, which I did.

I’d also done the Camosun/Imperial/16^th Ave hills a number of times and was dreading them, but again, somehow they were a breeze.

This is a technical course. The first 25k or so is full of hills, both up and down, and then it (sort of) flattens out. I’d been warned particularly about the downhills. You can’t bank time in a marathon. If you fly down those long stretches of downhill, by the time you hit the seawall your quads will quit on you. So I purposely took the hills easy.

In my long training runs, the worst part had always been the stretch from about 23-30K. It’s a grind. Physically you’re tired, and psychologically you feel a bit beaten down. So, that was what I was expecting during the race, but it didn’t happen. The spectators definitely helped. So many people came out to cheer. A few friends showed up on the course, as well as my son and his girlfriend. And again: the taper, carb-loading, adrenaline—that helped too.

By the time I was leaving Kits, I was on track to hit a compromise time between optimism and realism, but it would all come down to the last 10K. The race doesn’t really start until you get over the Burrard Street Bridge. At that point, everything you’ve done either rewards your restraint or exacts a penalty. My plan was to, at the very least, hold my race pace through the last 10K. At best, I wanted to be able to pick it up at the end.

There was absolute carnage on the seawall. So many people were reduced to walking (or I should say, limping)—a lot of them young. I started counting the people I passed, but by the time I hit 200 I got bored and gave up. I passed at least 350 people in that last 10K, but pretty soon my quads were also feeling the burn, so I stopped briefly to stretch. Then I put my foot on the gas for the last 3K, remembering a clip I’d seen of Kipchoge who talked about leaning into the pain and pushing past it. Which I did. I was really proud of my finish which is UPHILL at the end (who planned this course?).

I finished with a time that, if you believe my watch, was around what I’d hoped for. Chip time added a couple of minutes, but regardless, I was extremely pleased.

I’d also been warned that a marathon beats you up worse than an Ironman, and I am here to say that’s the truth. I spent the rest of the day either on the floor, on the couch, or in the bath, and I was in bed by 8:30. My left toes look like someone hit them with a mallet, thanks to all that downhill. My legs are ridiculously sore. I’m only thankful there are no stairs where I live.

But beyond anything, I am pleased with this race. It was hard won, which made finishing it that much sweeter.