Keep Showing Up: Hitting the Canadian 5km Championships Elite Standard

Is it possible that whoever coined the phrase, “third time is a charm” had short distance road racing in mind?  Where you race yourself into your best performance? I think the answer is yes.

Sunday August 22 was the Blue Nose Marathon’s Popsicle 5km event on the Halifax Waterfront.  It would be my 3rd summer 5km race as I chased my goal of running under the Medavie Canadian 5km Championships Elite Standard of 18:30 for open women.  Run the standard and you get entry in the Elite Field. I probably could apply as a Masters Athlete at age 41 but I wanted to run the open (everyone) standard. I came up 9 seconds short at Georgetown 5km in July- on a hot course with 9 sharp corners and 600m of trail.  I felt like it was a better performance than the 18:39 on the clock so was hopeful for the next one.  The next one was the Athletics NS Club Championship at Beazely Track (recap here).  A sweltering day with 100% humidity and a 10am start.  I melted and held on for a 19:04.  I suffered hard for that and chose to believe that the exercise in suffering would serve me well next time.  

Here’s next time: the Blue Nose Popsicle Race.  

My training partner Maura and I planned to race this together.  Ahead of race day, we studied the course.  A 2.5km shot straight up Lower Water Street. Ideal.  A turnaround cone.  Yep, can handle that.  Then the course is 2km home along the Halifax Waterfront Boardwalk. This is essentially 2km of winding, zig-zagging sharp corners.  I count 26 sharp turns. No long stretches to get back to full power 5km stride.  Less than ideal for chasing a specific fast time.  But by the grace of science and a community that (mostly) cares for each other,  we’ve moved beyond COVID-time trialling and you must run the race course in front of you and this is what’s in front of us.  We decide that we simply can’t hold anything back in the first 3km.  I think of it as a 3km race with 2 unpredictable km to the finish line.

I spend my week before the race on PEI, in my happiness of happy places, on the beach with my kids.  My last workout is garbage- so hot, so humid, so beach-drained, but it doesn’t matter, I have a whole 2021 of healthy training under me.  

My life is busy so the day before a race, I usually take some time to prepare and write out my plan for myself and to really think about what I’m going to do and mentally prepare.  I decide not to do this this time.  It’s the 3rd 5km in a row. I know what to do and how to do it.  The course is unpredictable with all of those turns. I’ll just go, have fun, do what I can.  I spend most of the day before lounging on my deck with my family. I do flip through Alex Hutchinson’s book Endure and note these passages, filing them away in my 5km tactics vault:

• 

• 

Race Day!

I meet my Love Training More athlete Shelley at the race site.  I chat easily with my Halifax Road Hammer teammate Ian Holdway.  He has bib #1 to my bib #2. I like this.  It’s also an extra external and powerful motivating cue for me: if I have bib #2, I better be #2 over the line.

The pre-race atmosphere is simply glorious and I feel it deeply, “look at us, back in this road racing space again.”

Pros Troy and Chris line the field up safely, socially distanced, by bib #s. As we mill about in our places, not yet walked up the timing mat, long time run community figure/race director Stacy leaves her spot and dashes up to me:

“You got bib #2,” she says, “But you know how I am about the women. I want to see you over the line first.” 

I laugh, “I’ll try!” I say.  Because my teammate bib#1 Ian and I just raced on the track together where he set a new Provincial M45-49 Record at 16:38.

“There is no try!” orders Stacy. “Only DO!”  I laugh again. Excellent Rocky quote. Perfect for this moment.  

• 

• 

It’s now 2 minutes to go. Get in your places.  I am on the start line next to Ian.  But where the heck is my Maura girl!?  Her MO is to arrive at the line at the last moment, swooping in like a star (and/or a mother of twins with a husband who wants to race too, lol!).  I leave my spot to ask Dave T, “where is Maura!?”  I might be a little frantic.  He calmly tells me not to worry, she’ll be here.  She swoops in at 7:29:30am.  I tell her our first kilometer pace in min/km and then shake my head because Maura only speaks in miles and I do not.  She tells me that she’ll just tuck in behind and I tell her that I will just run fast, stay on me.  She’s had a less than ideal week with illness but she’s good now and she’s a monster competitor. We got this.

Gun goes.

• 

• 

I have very little material in my memory bank to piece this together which is exactly how I want it.  It was one of those amazing and fierce days for me where I was all the way dialled in and just focused on the task at hand, one kilometer at a time.

1km. 

This kilometer feels amazing.  The first peek I take at my watch to ensure that I’m not recklessly pulling Maura and I out at 3:20s/km- that peak says 3:59/km. Or so I think I see.  GPS isn’t always correct along the city waterfront so I just disregard that and run it how I should feel.  Ian’s up ahead and I follow his tangents. I am spaced beyond him as I should be.

One younger runner didn’t peek at this watch to ensure he wasn’t reckless and Maura and I have overtaken him by about 600m.  We see Sarah along here.  I barely register, don’t even look at her but I absorb her love.

1st Split 3:37.8.  I feel amazing.

2km:

Maura’s tight on me, where she should be.  Two phrases repeat in my head, “Work together.  Feel amazing.”  I take one look at my watch over this kilometer, needing to know, “Am I on? Am I on?” (i.e. am I running fast enough). I see that I am on. That’s all for this kilometer.

2nd km Split 3:35.5  I still feel amazing.

3km: 

We are entering the Dockyard here.  Ian turns around.  So do we.  “Work together, feel amazing.”  

We come back on the field now and I absorb some more energy from Shelley, Jody, Doreen and Marlem and all of the others who call out, “great running.”  It’s just Maura and I hammering it. We take the turn onto the boardwalk, behind the Casino, into this unknown, unpredictable closing 2km full of corners.

3rd km Split 3:39.5 I feel like I should in 5km.  I see the split but no longer have the brain capacity to assign any value to it.  

4km:

So many turns.  Counting up afterwards, there are 14 corners  in this kilometer.  I find myself close to the poles/fences, raising my right arm over them.  It’s wild.  The four turns around the Queen’s Marque are the worst.  

I have some thoughts floating through my consciousness here: “This is hard. Maybe I don’t want to do this today.”  They aren’t very loud thoughts though and they dissolve as quickly as they appear as I tell myself that I feel like I should.   Though I don’t have any elbow burning in lactic acid pain, likely because the turns have pulled some wind out of our fast girl sails

4th km Split 3:46.8 I am starting to feel confused.

5km:

I knew going in that I needed to run 3:40s to hit the 18:30 standard. I know that I have 3 splits below, 1 split above.  I think I am close but I can’t calculate what close is. If there ever was a race where you had to answer a mid-race skill testing question to continue on the course, I would surely fail it and my race would be over, haha.  I have my watch screen on lap pace, not cumulative time, and as usual, I have barely look at it anyway.  I simply know I am some under, one over 3:40.   It’s the last kilometer.  

Or is it?

For about 10 seconds, I am so confused. That was the 4th kilometer split to ring.  Is there one kilometer left? Or two?  You know in a workout, like 10 x 400m.  When you get to the 9th, there are still two 400s left.  I can’t piece this together.  But I have just seen Sarah and I know where I am on the boardwalk and I know where the finish line is on the boardwalk so I just put this counting business away and keep on running hard. 

(when the race ends, I know that if my brain function decompensated to that of a preschooler learning to count, I was racing to my max potential in that moment). 

I am going hard here past the playground as I think that we are blasting straight through the Salt Yard and aside from about an 80m straightaway to the finish, it’s the only tiny straightaway in the last kilometer.  Oh, but we are not blasting through the Salt Yard for a 200m straightaway, we are turning left to go around it.

Here, there is a decision to make to navigate the race course.  Or at least, to my preschooler brain, there appears to be a decision to make at a fork in the boardwalk  (in the light of the non-racing day, the decision is to follow the actual boardwalk or to run into the newly opened seating area).  I do register that my Hammers teammate Lauren is the volunteer here.  I trust that Lauren will yell at me quickly if I take the wrong fork.

I hear her say her scripted line, “Turn right here at the octopus.”  

Octopus? What the what?

And then 5 steps later: “No Erin, NO, get back on the boardwalk!!!” Lauren is yelling. 

I made the wrong choice and am running into the seating area.  Without breaking a stride, I slide around a ceramic decoration on the line between each area (the octopus, of course) and I’m back on course.  Sorry, Maura!

I barely register that this just happened, I am simply back to hammering.  My 5km tactics are so practiced.  The part of my brain that is practiced and still functioning holds up a sign that says, “Mamba.” I know what to do with that and I press. Then my badass smart racer part of my brain holds up a recording of my 7 year old son’s singsong voice, “I never give up!” and those are the last coherent thoughts that I have, “I never give up, I will cash in this 18:30, TODAY”  as I kick it into the next high gear to get to that finish line. The gear I want is accessible and I go hard.

I see the finish line looming, in a final 80m straightaway. I look at the clock but don’t fully register what it’s telling me. 

Drive all the way through the line. 

Watch off….

OMG YES!!!!!  18:14.

National Standard. In my hand. 

Last kilometer split 3:32.7.

• 

• 

I know that I had lost my Maura shadow somewhere in the last kilometer and I turn and watch her finish, punching her own National Elite Standard of 18:24.

OMG YES YES YES!!!!

I am simply jubilant. 

I cruise around the finish area and talk to everyone who will listen, telling them that I just ran the 5km Nationals Standard.  The hydration station volunteer (lol, she listened and smiled and nodded appropriately). Ian. My friends. Luke MacDonald. Sherri, the race director, who I’m not even sure knew what I was trying to tell her. It’s wonderful.  I tell them that Maura and I both, aged 41 and 39, mothers of two, hit the open standard and not a Masters’ Runner standard.  

Now I get to watch Love Training More runners succeed and form some amazing new athletics memories.  Shelley runs a 70 second PB to place in the top 10 women and more importantly, has a super positive race experience..  Marlem runs an almost 4 minute PB.  Doreen almost runs a PB whilst not even truly racing after running what she tries to call the 28km long run I assigned to her the day priori (it was 30.99km, #RedmondRules).  Jody turns out her standard not-racing solid low 5:00/km performance in the middle of her long run.  Erin L races with the biggest smile on her face. Andrew gets out there and though we miss him, far exceeds the goal time he had when he first signed up for Love Training More coaching.  

I chat with the running community before cooldown/coffee cheering wave two. It’s an amazing morning doing what I love.  

Thanks to volunteers and the Blue Nose staff for a great event, with a special shout out to volunteers Annie and Lauren for the included cheers!  Troy and Chris Peters- amazing start/finish line as usual.  And a thanks to Coach Lee for continually reminding me to be patient this year.  Perhaps it was Coach Lee who coined, “third time’s a charm.” A significant thanks to my genius osteopath Martha who has kept my body running through this.

I am thrilled to get home and submit my elite application for the Medavie Canadian 5km Championships.  Keep. Showing. Up.  Those are the indomitable Des Linden’s words.  They led her to a Boston Marathon victory.  They led me to this national elite standard.  

If you hop onto @moncton5kmchampionships’ Instagram or Facebook pages, you’ll see that the Elite Field for this event is stacked with national class athletes and Olympians newly home from Tokyo.  I don’t have any delusions of grandeur that I am on the same level as them.  I am an ordinary Master’s athlete. I am a mother; a coach of multiple teams; and a nurse who simply and fully loves the journey of training and the pursuit of how good I can be. I did hit the qualifying standard. I belong in that race. Athletes like me need to take up space too.  This is similar to a conversation that I have with my 9 year old daughter, my hockey player, on repeat, when she plays in co-ed league with very few other girls and mostly boys: “you are important, go out there, be yourself and take up space.”

So 3 things.  Race yourself into your best 5km performance.  Keep showing up.  Take up space.