Never Again

I learned a valuable lesson today at the Montreal Marathon which should have been learned last September at the Ottawa Festival. By writing this down, I am determined to never make this mistake ever again.

In a race where condition heavily favours skating in a pack, I will resist the urge to skate until the next pack picks me up as long as there is enough distance left in the race such that holding that gap is futile.

Such an obvious rule yet it has taken me more than one race to fully realize my mistake. I apply this rule often enough during starts when I try to find my pack. However, when it happens at the middle of the race, I have been dumb enough up to now to ignore this rule. Well, never again.

Start of the race. I was in TISC blue/orange/black. Photo by cor1000.

The weather condition of the race today was far from favourable with cold temperature and strong wind. I had a good warm up though leg did not feel fresh at all. I chalked it up to my body's reaction to cold temperature. The start was a far cry from last year. Going into a headwind, the pace was tame and there was a huge group for the longest time. I was not fazed even though a guy fell right in front of me 5m after the start. After I got seperated from the main pack, I was left with two girls SB and AS from Team Synergy. SB was still pushing the pace but with only three girls in the pack, we weren't going anywhere. We picked up GN from Toronto Inline shortly after and the pack behind caught up bringing us DL from Ottawa Inline. It was a good size pack and I positioned myself well for 4th place in the women's field.

DL was poised to attack. Photo by cor1000.

For the first five laps, things were good. I sat comfortably in the pack and AS got flushed out in one of the surges. There were some attacks which did not seem threatening to my eyes but the pack reacted nonetheless. My legs did not like the accelerations. Climbing is becoming one of my strengths this season but for some reasons, that tiny climb on the course just felt so labourious. I was not feeling good today. After we picked up ST from Ottawa Inline, DL initiated an attack that ultimately fell short and she dropped out of the pack soon after (as I found out later, she dropped out of the race at that point). Unbeknownst to me, I was actually fighting for 3rd place with SB because MC from Empire/Canarium dropped out of the race too.

Unfortunately, things fell apart after I completed lap 5. I let the pack go because I was simply not recovering from the accelerations. I rolled for a bit before GN caught up to me and the two of us skated together for over two laps. This was a huge mistake. I should have just rolled to wait for the next pack instead of actively skating. Both of us spent way too much energy fighting the wind to hold a futile gap. Face it, what are the chances that we can hold the gap until end of race? As can be expected, when the next pack caught up to us, I was only in the pack briefly until the next acceleration began. I did not have the energy to stay in the pack. My race was basically over at that point. I packed up with GN again and we finished the remaining laps.

Aside from a valuable lesson, I am alarmed by how my body felt during this race. Things that I've been training for such as climbing and recovering from acceleration felt like crap. I have some hard thinking to do before launching into some tough training.