Serenelli's Regina Marathon 2001
Sound track: Delibes, Messe Breve - 1st Kyrie

A new personal record has been made.

It all worked out... including the long trip from PA. Nice dinner on Sat and Concert at the Centre of the Arts...

I did find my camping spot right at the start line as usual. It wasn't that easy to spot the place in a dark night without moon.

I just could not go to sleep last night, and do not know why... maybe the long drive...

This morning I got up more on the excitement of the coming action then proper rest.

I was freezing and I had to turn the furnace on in the van and wait in my sleeping bag until a reasonable temperature was reached in the vehicle.

Very good organization even considering that this was the first edition. The only thing was the line up for the famous chip. I really like the use of the chip as it gives you a nice bunch of data for your understanding of how your performance worked.

I kept warming up running the track to keep warm and those guys delayed our start by about 10 minutes... it was not the nice Winnipeg temperature... but just a few degrease above "0". During the morning the sun was nice and warm but we had a very cold wind for challenge.

We had an incredible number of runners... 450 full marathon and 125 teams of 4 people for the relay marathon. At the shout start we all left, more out of need of warming up then to race... ;-)

The course was wonderful, the best marathon I have been this far, as it went trough all regina parks on pedestrian/cyclist routes. We have been exposed to car traffic very little and this has added to the enjoyment of the race.

I runned almost half marathon with Jenn... and lost her at the 20km when she made a toilet stop... oh boy she is quick... the chip gave us the 21km time and our difference was only 38 seconds... I think we can learn from Jenn ;-)

I was in great running shape and paced myself very well this time... up to 40km... at that point I had to give in a couple of minutes, I had reached my limit... so instead of the wanted 3:20... I adjusted to 3:22... I have never being this close to my 3:20 target as today... so after all it is possible. I should be looking for 3:15 now... just kidding ;-)

Everything comes with a price. My stomach was closed for a good couple of hours after the race. In my experience this is a sign of a great energy consumption during the race. In any case we are here to learn new things about our boundaries and this was another of those opportunities.

You may now like to see the numbers as provided by the chip:

Stephen 29 overall on 450 full marathon runners
first mile 8:08
half marathon 1:39:02
Full marathon 3:22:31
Pace Mile/Min 7:44

The winner was a male from Winnipeg (2:49 with a half of 1:22).

This is all for now as it is time for my beauty nap ;-)

Happy running to all.

Stephen ;-)