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Last Sunday, this was my 3rd participation to the Detroit Half Marathon. It starts in Detroit, then we cross in Canada using the bridge, we run on Riverside Dr in Windsor before taking the tunnel back to USA for a final loop downtown.

Here’s our group at packet pickup and expo on the Saturday afternoon…

This Detroit race was my first Half Marathon, done in 2009. I did 1:35:05 at the time. Last year, I did it in 1:28:35. My PB on this distance date from this spring though, with a 1:27:31. With all the training I have logged for Ironman Training, I was hoping to shave another minute to that time.

Something was new this year: Corinne was racing it too! She could not train very much for the distance, but she was decided to tackle the distance and take this challenge.

We crossed the border very early at 5am to avoid traffic and the problems I had 2 years ago where I barely made it to the start line in time. So we had to kill time in the cars before heading out to race start…

 The temperature was ideal for running, around 7 deg. C - but quite windy. The usual “garbage bag” trick helps staying warm and protected from the wind before race start… you just have to ditch the bag right before the gun goes.

 This year, I was in Corral “A” which means I was in the first group going out. I saw many people I knew in my corral start, and I did not see the time pass before it was time to go. Coach James was also racing this year (I guess I should say “running” rather than “racing” since he did not train much at all this year). Before too long, we were off!

 Coach James ran with me up to the bridge, which was nice. The first km I ran deliberately slow - but I over did it at 4:15/km. Still, better than starting too fast and then bugging out later. I was holding my pace pretty good according to Mr Garmin: I wanted to hold between 4:00 and 4:05/km average or faster for a nice PR. The bridge went fast, then we were running in Canada. Here I am, on Riverside Dr (Thanks Syd for the picture!).

I had my “Malden Park Runners” singlet, so I was cheered a lot by the crowd in Canada. Nice! It helped holding that painful pace. And the MPR group had a cheering station near the tunnel which was awesome. Did a row of “high fives” on my way. Reaching the entrance of the tunnel, my average pace was at 4:02.. pretty happy with that, considering the conditions and the wind blowing!

My Garmin took a crap again in the tunnel… In 2009, all my data and average pace got screwed up at that point because I had the foot pod, and when the watch got the GPS signal back after the tunnel, it added the distance twice…. In 2010, I left the Foot Pod at home, and it seemed to work correctly. So this year I did the same, but this time the portion I ran in the tunnel without GPS signal was just lost completely, never added when the watch got the GPS signal back. Grrrr! Different software versions I guess. So I switch my view to the “lap data” screen and started to monitor my average lap pace (I have the auto-lap feature set at 1km). So I am not sure at what pace I ran the tunnel, but I know I was running on pace afterwards. The second part of the tunnel is always a tough time because of the temperature difference and the hill coming out of it. It did not seem as painful as the last years though.

After a loop in Detroit, I was making the final turn to the finish line, pushing as hard as I could at that point.

 I crossed the finish line pretty happy with my run.. I however did not like what I saw on my watch: I thought I was on pace to finish in 1:26:xx or even 1:25:xx, but  the clock showed 1:27:26. A PB by 5 ridiculous seconds. At least, it is a PB. Also, it is still 1 minute faster than last year on the same course. That time gives me a pretty good ranking though, with a top 50 in 8000 participants.

After chatting with friends in the finish chute - freezing - I made it to the car to get warm clothes and wait for Corinne! Here’s a picture of me waiting taken by Charlotte while she was walking to the finish line - she was injured earlier this year, so she decided to still do the half marathon, running a portion and then walking the other portion, taking picture and documenting the race “through the eyes of a runner”. Usually, it’s the spectators taking pictures of the runners.. hehe!

A little bit later, Corinne passed by me, running to the finish line. I screamed her name but she never saw me. I am very proud of her for finishing the race! The longest run she logged in training was 5 km, so this was quite the challenge. We were lucky enough to meet very quickly by luck after her finish.

I could tell she was really in pain though, as it took everything to walk back in direction of the car. In the process, we ran into our group! Awesome!

Congratulations to Tracy for also finishing her first Half Marathon distance, and big shot out to Craig for finishing his second full Marathon with almost a PR by 1 hour at 3h50.. woo hoo!

The day after the race, I was surprised to find a picture of Corinne in the official online gallery of the Detroit Free Press newspaper (picture #44 from this link):

A few more pictures are in my photo album:

Detroit Free Press Half Marathon 2011

On a diferent topic, my website was quite unstable lately and barely working… but I think I found the problem and it should be more stable now

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 at 4:54 am and is filed under Sport and Races, Our news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.