The Egg Nog Jog - Sunday Dec 12 2010

So this race was an interesting one. The distance was 10.8 km and by no means a long race by general long distance standards. It was located in Terra Cotta, which is just north of Caledon Ontario and for those who don't know this area - this is hill country.

A few weeks earlier, I was shut out of this race because it had sold out. Today was different, many people, including people from the group, had chosen last minute to sit out. The roads were bad and it was raining at this point but the conditions were manageable. I managed to get in under someone elses name. As it turned out, many people were not registered, making it really easy to just run without a bib.

The first 2km out of the Terra Cotta conservation area were straight downhill down Winston Churchill towards King. I took off like a bolt hoping to get some time on Rob and Liz, who always seem to put me through the paces. I think I may have even broken eight minutes. Unfortunately that was the were all of the easy running ended. From 2 to 3km, things flattened out and then from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 were all relentless and very rolling hills. What made it worse was that many roads were icy and semi snow covered making it really tough to get any sort of footing. I remember at one point climbing one of the many hills looking down at my Garmin and seeing my pace at 8:30pkm and thinking - Oh god this is tough. I didn't walk though and kept moving.

Sure enough Rob caught me somewhere around 8km and he was looking fresh and full of legs. We stayed together for most of the rest until he realized that Steve - Another from our group, was just ahead. We charged ahead and he took off.

My official finishing time was 53:11 and I was really pleased with a sub 5 min pace on such a hilly route.

We'll definitely be back on that route later in the year as Lake Placid gets closer.

I know that that route was tough since my legs don't normally get sore have actually been sore for two days now. They're starting to come back today but I can still feel a little rock like in them.