Toronto Goodlife Half-marathon

That's me on the right, sprinting through
the finish line.

 I ran the Toronto Goodlife half-marathon today. When I ran it in 2008, it was my first real race, and it remained in such a nice memory that I simply had to run it again. It comes only 3 weeks before the New York City marathon, and I’m happy to boast that I’m in full training and pretty much on target, ready for the world biggest marathon.

Although much smaller than the Scotiabank Waterfront Toronto marathon in September, this one had much nicer medals – this year they are even curved, resembling the Vancouver Olympics medals, as you can see in the pictures.

I’m very happy with my race – finished with the chip time of 1hr 28min 7sec. You can see the map and my pace splits. Altogether, out of 5,000+ half-marathoners, I placed 101st; I’m 90th in men’s competition and 13th in my age group (45-49). Although I ran faster last year (15 sec faster), this time I felt full of energy and wasn’t exhausted after the race. After disastrous spring when I struggled with the hamstring injury, this finally looks like the good old me again.

As for the marathon – I wish Torontonians were more cheerful. There was only a handful of people cheering on, the whole scene was slightly pathetic. I’m not sure who is to blame – the town, which doesn’t promote the marathon, but rather works against it, because the drivers complain about the road closures. Or the organizers, who did a poor promotion job and, instead of finding content and reason for people to come out—like live music and other performances along the route—they looked as if trying to stay under the radar and not agitate the complainers. I believe, if most of the town embraces the race, as it is during the big marathons in Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc., no one would dare to complain about the road closure. As far as I know, nobody complains about the closures for the Gay Pride Parade in June. But, I’m afraid I’m wishing for impossible—Torontonians never fail to justify what the rest of the country think about them, and it’s not at all positive. Today, I was leaning that way too.