Ottawa Fall Colours Races 2010 Report

This past weekend it was Canadian Thanksgiving and we travelled to Ottawa to visit family and also to allow the boys to do some running. For the past couple of years Owen has run the kids 1km "Turkey Trot", with Malcolm participating last year for the first time. They were both keen to do it again this year and so we registered them. Owen also wanted to run his first ever official 5k and I decided to accompany him. Meanwhile, Monica ran her first ever official half-marathon and had an absolutely awesome race! I even got to join her near the end for a couple of kilometres to cheer her on.

Here's a picture of Malcolm running his race. It seems that he keeps his fingers crossed on both hands while running, but never looking at the camera!

After the boys ran their Turkey Trot event Monica was off for her race. Then it was time for Owen and I to line up for the 5k. The race was a bit disorganized and nobody seemed to know where the start was. The 10k racers went off first and we thought we were starting at the same spot only to be told just minutes before the race that the start was at a different location! We were not the only ones with this problem and jogged with a whole crowd over to where the 5k race was supposed to start.

After a little bit of waiting we were off! Owen and I ran together the whole time and I let him set the pace. He ran very steady and only stopped to walk through the water station after about 2k. He then kept a solid pace all the way to the end despite a couple of decent hills that we had to climb. As we made our way around the streets I began to realize that this race was going by too quickly and that we would end up at the Finish Line long before my Garmin showed that we'd run 5k. I was justified in my concern since this is exactly what happened. At the beginning I had thought that we would have to run once around the Cumberland Heritage Museum grounds, as the website described that we would, but the runners were directed straight onto the road. This turned out to be the reason why the race was measured short and is now listed as a "4.3K" race. I felt bad for Owen given that he wanted to run a real 5k, but in the end he had run his Turkey Trot 1k on top of this race and ultimately ran more than five kilometres, just not all in one shot. In any case our official stats were:

• 4.3k
• Overall Place: 198/351 (Owen), 200/351 (Me)
• Gender Place: 102/136 (Owen), 103/136 (Me)
• Category Place: 23/31 (Owen), 11/12 (Me)
• Time: 26:31
• Pace: 6:10/km

Here are some pics of us running, and then Owen kicking his Dad's butt at the Finish Line!