Run for Women: Unionville 10k

This weekend past, I did a 10k run for the "Run for Women:  Unionville" with my friend Susan.  The charity that the race was supporting was the Women’s Mental Health programs.  With the small band of runners, they raised approximately $30,000.  Considering that they have this race in multiple cities, the accumulation of the funds would make for a good fundraising grand total.

7:00PM Night before the Race

After work, I headed to my friend's house to do some wedding favour assembly line work :D While we were doing that, two of my other friends made spaghetti - it was time to carb up! All the while, we snacked on some samosas that Cecilia brought over.

I had two huge plates of spaghetti - and normally I eat only one big plate of it before a marathon!  So we definitely overate :D  Oh well, haha, it tasted good never the less.

6:30AM Morning of Race

The morning of the race, I had intended to just layer my t-shirt with another long sleeved one and a raincoat just to keep myself warm.  At least that was what I thought I would only need.  It turned out it was -3 degrees!  So, I ended up having to borrow my friend's U of T sweatshirt.  And still even with it on, with my two layers AND a raincoat, it was still cold.  Yikes.  I checked my iphone and it said by the time we started the race it should be around -1 degrees (around 9am).  Yes.  2 degrees warmer, yet still in the negatives! haha.

We freshened up, ate breakfast (her parents were awesome to make bacon and eggs for us!), and got there by 7:30am.  Parking took a bit of time since the public parking that was right by the race was full, but looked like the lot could handle one more car (namely ours!), but wasn't meant to be and we had to find parking elsewhere.

Once we parked, we walked to the where the race startline was; Unionville Curling Club, it was right by a museum!  Too bad it wasn't open, I would have loved to just wander in there instead of outside in the cold.

We looked around to get some freebies - and we did!  shopper's drug mart 20x points option as well as some travel sized Listerine.

We wandered around and then wanted to head back to the car so that we could put away our goodies bag.  We returned again and walked around... we had a lot of time to kill.

Susan in the meantime debated maybe 4 to 5 times whether she wanted to lose the vest she was wearing on top of the three layers she was already wearing;  however upon walking towards the car, it became cold and then warm, then cold again.  In the ended, the vest stayed on haha, we had about a week before our trip, so it was better to be too hot while running than too cold.

Race Time!

The first runners that started were actually the little kids; they ran with their parents for 1km; it was very cute.

Following them, were the rest of us, 5ks and 10ks mixed together.

The route that we ran along was nice, not many uphills, some nice scenery and well marked path along with helpful officers diverting traffic and cheering volunteers.

You really couldn't ask for more from a race :)

Since I was running based off a 1k, I broke it down in my head that it was really just 10 1ks, perfectly doable.  With new running tunes on my iphone, I picked some really nice upbeat ones to keep my running at a rhythm.  I was really worried in the back of my mind that my left thigh would "spaz" out as it did during my niagara marathon.  It had hurt a lot, so I took it very slow and steady on my first 1k.  Not that I could really run that fast since my muscles felt so cold that it needed time to warm up.

When I reached the 5k mark, as I usually do, I felt a twinge of regret:  "I should have signed up for the 5km!", haha.  But I moved on, since I felt alright after 5k, the last 5k shouldn't be so bad.

It wasn't until I nearly reached my 9th kilometer that disaster struck - my earphones went partially out of commission.  It wasn't entirely unusable, but it wasn't working a 100% either; more like 50% since only the left earphone worked...

I decided to go the last km without music, and also decided that the raincoat at this point needed to come off.  The weather had improved dramatically in the course of the hour... either that or I was warmed up by the race - likely both.

Finally I reached the finish line, the timing just right as I had also just finished the last drop of my water.

As I crossed the finish line I was very pleased to have been given another water and also a surprise bracelet for running the race.

The best and biggest surprise was how good the post-race food was. lol.  Usually the food isn't too much to talk about; plain bagels, muffins and banana, etc.

But at this race, I was impressed to get fancy bagels!  There were onion, cheese, sesame, even a cinnamon crunch like bagel.  Butter and plastic knives were also available along with protein shakes and other granola bars.  One could get used to this type of post-race food!

Yummy.  Suffice to say, we enjoyed our food there.  And we also decided we would definitely comeback to this race next year!

We left the curling club and headed back to my friend's house where we freshened up and then met up with another one of friends for dim sum.  Like all our post race routines, we pigged out there :P  You would have thought we had run a marathon or something, but we told ourselves still, regardless, we deserved it :D