Running for Boobies…

Ok, the first thing I’ll say…someone really needs to create races that start around, say, noon. This whole getting-up-before-the-asscrack-of-dawn thing on a perfectly good Sunday…combine that with the rain that was coming down at an almost horizontal angle, plus the wind whipping through the downtown core, and we had all of the hallmarks of a typical Fall Vancouver day! Perfect day for the CIBC Run For The Cure…

Cin and I managed to stumble out of bed and dress ourselves with some modicum of success - although now that I think of it, I was wearing a blue running cap, red jacket, and black Mizuno pants with a green stripe. Ugh. I was almost Primary-Colour-Man. All I needed was a yellow cape. Well, I subscribe to the notion that running, much like golf, gives us all the chance to wear things we would never even dare to get away with on any other day. At least I wasn’t running in a skimmer and plus-fours…although nothing would scream ‘I’M BRITISH’ more than that.

We chucked down some oatmeal and quickly walked over to BC Place. This being my first Run For The Cure, I didn’t really know what to expect…

“Good God, that’s a lot of people.”

12,000 hardy brave souls, trying to find shelter under anything even resembling an awning, doorway, or tree. By the time 9:00 rolled around, most people had given up and resolved themselves to the fact that yes, it’s Vancouver, we should be used to the rain by now, and decided to have some fun with it. Dogs dressed in pink scarves, feather boas everywhere, people running with pink devil horns on their heads, tiaras, it was a cacophony of pink.

And I discovered that Vancouverites have a fascination with the word ‘boobies’. It was everywhere. On t-shirts. On signs. On the little race bibs that people were pining to the backs of their run shirts that would say ‘I’m Running For…’ and then they’d fill in the names of their relative/friend/someone they knew who had either survived or succumbed to breast cancer. I felt like yelling out ‘BOOBIES!!!!’ to see if it would result in a ‘MARCO….POLO!!!’ type reaction, but I had a feeling that would incur the wrath of The Cin, who was looking like she needed to be fueled by caffeine in a bad way.

We headed to the corporate photo tent, hooked up with the rest of our group and had a quick pic snapped. We also managed to retrieve our run shirts and race numbers from our team leader; however, I wanted one of those ‘I’m Running For…’ bibs, as did Cin, so we ducked back inside BC Place to grab a couple. Amongst the thousands of people who were taking refuge in the stadium until, I assume, the last possible moment when they’d come flying down the hill to the start line like a throng of zombies in 28 Weeks Later, there were the Free Hug people.

We stocked up. A hug here, a hug there, it was all good. Takes some of the edge off of being severely de-caffeinated when you’re giggling.

We found the table, and each wrote a sign to wear for the race…mine simply said “I’m Running For…My Sister, Sally”. Sal’s a survivor - she was originally diagnosed with breast cancer about, God, 2 years ago I think? After the removal of the lump, aggressive chemo, and a whole lot of holistic and homeopathic remedies, it looks like it’s gone. Even so, the main reason why I wanted to do this particular run was, more so than keeping myself active during the off-season, to give something back to the community and agencies that helped to keep my big sis around for me, her hubbie, her kids, and the rest of our family. Running 5K seems like the least I could do…she was such a warrior during all of the treatment - never losing her completely inappropriate sense of humour (a family trait) even during the amazing sickness and pain she must’ve been suffering, the loss of her hair, the worry and doubt. The women in my family are amazingly strong. A 5K is nothing compared to those kinds of struggles.

After we pined each other, we wandered down to the starting line, and took our place in the ‘joggers’ section. I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t be able to run the entire 5K, since this was honestly only the second time I had run since my triathlon in August.

Yep, I’m that insane. Ran once back in mid-August, then didn’t run for six weeks. Part of it was the toe issue (which was feeling pretty damn good that morning, actually), part of it was sheer laziness. Now, I was about to find out what kind of hell my body could stand after being off for so long. I looked enviously at the sleek bodies in the ‘runners’ section ahead of us, and allowed myself to feel a smug sense of satisfaction at not being back with the ‘walkers’.

Hey, I went through a lot to learn how to run more than 2 minutes at a time! Give an ego a break…

There was some hyperactive little cheerleader bouncing up and down on the stage with a group behind her, trying to lead the crowd in a warmup. Of course, from where we were, the sound of her voice by the time it reached our ears resembled the teachers from the old Peanuts specials..”whaaa wha wha whaaa whaaa”. Instead, we started improvising our own warmup moves to the music, which I sure resembled something akin to “Steve and Doug Butabi have an epileptic seizure”. For an encore, we started jumping in puddles, which annoyed the crap out of a few people, I’m sure. Whatever. It was raining so hard, it was going straight into my ears. A little puddle jumping was just what we needed to put an exclamation point on how soaked we already were…

Then, at 9:30, the countdown to zero.

We were off.

We didn’t move.

A few seconds passed.

I started jumping up to see above the crowd. Yep, the runners were gone, I could see them streaming down the road.

We started to shuffle forward…YEAH!!

Cin and I ran a total of twenty meters.

‘Well, this is anticlimactic” I though to myself.

We wound up doing this strange shuffle-lope-shuffle-walk-jog-shuffle for about the first few hundred meters. At the corner of GM Place, the sidewalk opened up, and a pack of us separated and split up the side. I didn’t even think about where Cin was, I just hit the gas and took off.

God, I missed this.

My legs felt amazing. It was like, the moment I started running my whole body went ‘ahhhhhh, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou’. I looked over and there was Cin, right beside me, matching me step for step. I couldn’t help myself, I started grinning like an idiot. This was exactly what I needed. Then I looked at my heart monitor.

174.

I almost slid to a halt.

Excuse me???

I tapped the monitor, then the sensor on my chest.

172.

I looked at Cin, who had a quizzical expression on her face. “According to my heart monitor, I’m at 174 right now.” “You’re kidding?!” “Nope.” “Maybe your battery needs changing?” “Ah, screw it, my RPE is around 6.5-7 right now - even if I am at 174, I feel great, so I’m going to keep going based on that.”

And with that, the Ironhead experiment of racing with a heart monitor came to a screeching halt. I remembered something Peter Reid had said at his seminar after the Vancouver Half-Iron - that he never races with a heart monitor because training versus racing are two totally different things. Adrenaline is far higher in a race situation, which can totally skewer feedback from a heart monitor. If you’re used to training around 145 and suddenly you look at your monitor to see 160, it’s going to cause concern, possibly fear/panic, which will result in an even higher rating as cortisol is suddenly released by your body in response to the stress. It’s far better to go with the Rate of Perceived Exertion as a gauge for how you are personally doing. Duly noted.

Right around that time, we came around the first corner, just as the first wave of runners was coming down Quebec in the opposite direction. I took a quick look over, and saw Aaron running in second place, gaining on the leader. I screamed “WAY TO GO DR. CASE!!” at the top of my lungs. Don’t know if he heard me, but I’m certain I scared the living bejeesus out of several people around me who were just out for a nice relaxing Sunday morning run. Aaron would go on to finish in second with a total 5K time of just over 00:16:00 . That’s a nice warmup for the Victoria marathon he’s running next weekend…

Around the 1K marker, I heard Cin gasp behind me “Paul…”. I looked back to see her in obvious pain. Her hip flexor had clenched up on her and she was running with this odd gait. Immediately we stopped and walked for a hundred meters to see if she could stretch it out. It started to relax, but it was going in fits and spurts. Therefore, we wound up doing the next 2K using a combination of jogging, walking, and a few luxurious stretches of flat out running. Unfortunately, I was so into the whole idea of running that I became Ironhead The Lecturing Asshole, berating her for not rehabbing her ankle (which was also giving her problems) but at the same time, I wouldn’t leave her there alone just so I could go running ahead. For about 1/2 a kilometre, I was miserable. I wanted to run, goddamnit! However, right around Science World, Cin had enough in her to make a go for about 500 meters, which was enough for me to get my ya-yas out and really fly for a while, right past the high school cheerleading squad in front of the ‘golf ball’ that is the Telus World of Science. Running past those cheerleaders, I started to applaud them for slogging it out in the rain…then the absurdity of my attitude hit me and I almost stopped dead in my tracks right there. I had totally forgot why we were running in the first place. My biggest problem that morning was not being able to run non-stop for extended periods of time? That’s it? ‘Jesus Christ, get some perspective mate’ my mind said to me.

Click.

The entire rest of the run was totally different. We jumped in puddles. Laughed. Refused to allow ourselves, sore and injured or not, to be beaten by a dude in a wheelchair (hey, I have pride). Waggled our eyebrows at the gal behind Cin who, when Cin passed her on the uphill ramp on to the Cambie Street bridge, exclaimed to her friend ‘hey, come on, if she can run up this damn thing, so can we…’. We braved the howling winds that were whipping across the bridge. That last kilometre was, quite honestly, miserable for running - but in the midst of all of this, we took the time to look around, realized where we were, what we were doing, and how fortunate we were to be able to be there at that moment.

As we rounded the last turn to the off-ramp from the bridge and began to descend to Pacific Avenue, we could see the finish line. I had already agreed with Cin that we would have a strong finish and really run the last part to the line. I turned to her to ask if she was ready, only to see that she was already three steps ahead of me, and had just kicked it in. I couldn’t help myself - I whooped a bit, then took off. When we hit the bottom of the ramp, I could see the timing clock at the finish line…

It had just clicked over to 00:45:30. I had missed my goal time by 30 seconds at least.

Sigh.

Oh well, screw it. I looked over at Cin and yelled ‘Let’s go!! Kick it into high gear! We can beat 46 minutes!!” Didn’t even wait for a response - I flat out opened up with everything I had and started sprinting.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you go “where the hell did THAT come from?” It could be right after you’ve just teed up a one-timer from the slot for the first time and buried it top-shelf. It could be the first time you threw a 50-yard bomb in football with your mates. It could be the first time you ever locked it up and went sideways around a corner only to pull it back out on the line.

This was one of those moments.

I caught myself thinking “I’ve never run like this in my life.” I weaved in and out of people, blowing past them, all the while keeping my eyes locked on the clock.

00:45:40

00:45:41

I heard footsteps beside me and out of the corner of my eye, a little blue hat.

To my complete and total surprise, Cin was right beside me. She ran faster. I ran faster. She pushed me. I pushed her.

We flew across the finish line at 00:45:53. I immediately collapsed into the arms of a really cute little goth chick who was holding a sign that said ‘Free Hugs’. We both laughed our asses off at how soaked I was…then I turned around, and stared up at the timing clock.

I had just beaten my personal best on a 5K by almost ten minutes. 45 minutes to me was a goal, a dream. Now, it was more than a reality. I knew right there that I could’ve easily done the entire run in under 35 minutes, possibly even 30. Immediately my goals for next week’s Turkey Trot changed.

Cin and I high-fived each other and headed for the food table. I was so proud of her for being such an amazing little trooper; she ran when everything in her body told her not to, and through it all, she ran out the pain in her hip and the pain in her ankle. She endured. She overcame. She didn’t give up. That, to me, is a wonderful sign that she and I are going to have a lot of fun training and racing together next year.

We ran into Rachel and some other friends from the Running Room, grabbed some quick carbs, and walked the two blocks back home. Our mission accomplished…I promptly celebrated with a two hour nap.

Next week - my first 10K race. I can’t wait.

Endnote: one thing that I will say about running in the Fall, the rain, and the wind…gloves are a must. Looks like we’re going shopping on Friday!