Follow the Pink-Eared Bunny OR Vancouver Half-Marathon

That's what I kept telling myself: "Follow the pink-eared bunny."

After a year-long hiatus from racing (due to a stressful job, wedding planning and let's face it, just plain LAZINESS), I decided it was time to do a race. The Vancouver Half has a nice course, the weather is good for running in May and it's only a 2.5 hr drive up to Canadaland.

It was an important race for a variety of reasons: the first time I run as Kelly Chow-Sale and the last time I run a race in the 25-29 age bracket. SAD!

Saturday went by fast, and on Sunday, our three alarms went off at 6am. I was ready. On the way to BC Arena, where the race started, I was joined by several runners, and I started getting really excited.

In the middle of the chaos, I spotted the 2-hour half-marathon pacer. He was a vision of Jesus himself: calm composure, long beard and a large group of followers. Unlike Jesus, he had a Garmin GPS watch and a very mismatched running outfit. I wasn't sure I could run it in 2, but that's always been A goal of mine (although I didn't know I was ready to actually attempt beating it).

I figured I'd follow the Pink-Eared bunny (as all of the Vancouver pacers wear cute little pink bunny ears) and see how it went. The first couple of miles I ran at about 8:30 min/mile, so I thought maybe I COULD do it.

But then I cramped it. And it didn't help that there was practically no food during the course. ONE miser power bar station. Some Canadian brand that was as hard as a brick. Then oranges. I kept hoping for gu. I remember at least two gu stations. No such luck. I ran the 13.1 miles pretty much on an empty stomach.

I was in serious pain, and I never felt that bad during a race. At one point I passed the bunny. I PASSED the bunny! I kept going on a runner's high or whatever you wanna call it.

And then it happened. It was inevitable. I lost sight of the bunny. I tried to catch up, but gave up and resigned to doing it in 2 hours at a later race. It was SAD. Not only that, my chronometer got all messed up because I pushed some random buttons and messed it up. So really I had no idea how close I was to my goal.

Still, I was happy.

Got home and found out I did it in 2:00:10. BARELY, but I did make it. Hooray for me! And watch out 30-35 yr-old bracket!