Saturday, September 17, 2016

Maritime Race Weekend - Pace Bunny Duty 2016

With so much racing lately, I decided that it was time to scale back and not push it on another weekend. This freed me up to help some fellow runners at Maritime Race Weekend, the site of some former glorious runs.

I opted for the 45 min 10k pace bunny spot this year, rather than the half marathon I have done at other races. Turns out this was a good idea as my knee has been a pick tender since last weekend's triathlon. A 4:30 pace would allow me to run, chat and encourage others.



Unlike other races, this one mixes the 5, 10 , half and full into one start, so I wasn't sure how many 10 k runners were actually running with me. At about 3 km in the 10, half and full turn up a steep little climb. By this point I was left with a handful of people near me and most were in the 10K.

By the top of the hill as we found our turn around and headed back down I was left with Kim and we ran together for the next bit. She was running well and just hoping to keep things in the 45 min zone. I ran and kept her in the right pace zone. Soon though we reached the 6.5 km mark and she obviously had some gas in the tank. I encouraged her to keep the slightly faster pace and off she went. I was a proud bunny. But at this time we passed another woman and she was trying her best but I could see needed that extra bit of encouragement to keep her pace up. With no one else around I managed to run the next 3.5 km with her, gently pushing and pulling her along, keeping the pace up on the slight rises pressing the pace a touch on the downs.

We passed a lot of 5k runners (who did a great job of keeping a path open for faster runners) and soon we were at the finish. I got her to pick it up and soon she crossed the line well ahead of the 45 min on the timer clock. That was great. I held back and popped across the line at 44:53.  All told a great day.

Working on the knee now, hope to have it back to full strength for next weekend with a bunch of activities coming up.

No comments: