Well this sucks. I knew we shouldn’t have come back. A day ago I was laying on the warm sandy beach at the Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas. And guess what? It was a lot warmer than the -22C it is here today!… it was about 25C when we left… or about 47C degrees warmer!!!
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
This was actually a multi-porpoise (little pun there) get away. You see a couple of months ago I came across an email ad for the Bahamas Marathon, and frankly any trip down south in the middle of Canadian winter is pretty tempting, but not always do-able. But then I noticed something about the date… January 19… it rung a bell… for some reason… oh ya!… it is our anniversary! Oh ya… it is our 25th wedding anniversary!!! Now if that isn’t a good reason to get away then I don’t know what is!
Funny thing is, it all seemed to perfect to pass up. You see 25 years ago, Joanne and I eloped to a little Caribbean island (San Andres, a tiny Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua!), so going back to a Caribbean island for our anniversary had some symmetry to it… as did running a marathon on the exact date of our anniversary, given that training and racing have been such a big part of our lives over the past 25 years! Oh, and it was a helluva lot warmer than it was here… so that made a lot of sense too! Seems to me that’s probably part of why we eloped all those years ago too!
So it all made great sense… at least to us. Mind you, I had to laugh when my parents told me that they had told some friends that we were going to the Bahamas for our 25th anniversary… and they thought that was pretty cool… and that we were running a marathon for our anniversary… and they all thought that was pretty crazy! I guess crazy is relative.
Anyway, when we got there it was kind of chilly, only about 70F/21C or so ( I know “boo hoo”), but it warmed up each day that we were there. But on the first day, we definitely looked like those weird Canadians, sitting on the beach, faking it in T-shirt and shorts… but, by god we were going to get some sun!
On the Saturday before the race we did exactly what you aren’t supposed to do the day before a marathon… we wandered around Atlantis and the race expo for hours and hours… and laid out in the sun, trying to get at least a bit of color! (ie: sunburn).
Then along came race morning. Which started at 4:00 am. Early. Really freakin’ early. But the race started at 6:00 am to avoid the heat, so we had to be up and at it. Funny thing was, it was barely warm enough to lay on the beach… but a fair bit warmer than one would want it to be to run a marathon. At 6:00 am it was about 65F/18C… and by the time the race was over it was 75F/24C, and probably hotter in the direct sunlight, as the clouds had finally all disappeared!
The course itself is beautiful. 90% of it is an out-and-back along the coast! The 10% is through downtown Nassau, which wasn’t bad… about the only bad part was going over the bridges and back to Paradise Island! The are 2 crazy steep bridges! In a very short span you have to gain the height for a cruise ship to go underneath! Yikes! The only good part about this was that at least the 2 bridges were in the first 3 miles or so… it shudder to think what I would have looked like if they had been in the last 3 miles!
The ying and yang of this winter marathon was… it was the perfect winter to get the hell out of town, because it has been so cold… but it was also about the worst winter I can remember for training for a winter marathon! (in fact, just before Christmas, Jo conceded… and dropped down from the full to the half marathon… what a “normal” person would do!)
I tried something different and joined an on-line training program (Runners Connect, pretty good program too!) after a disastrous Marine Corp Marathon in October (ie 3:59!)… my goal then was a Boston Qualifying time of 3:30… and apparently I hadn’t put the work in! So I wanted this to be a bit different experience. I was putting in 100k weeks for about 6 weeks… but with the crappy footing and conditions, it wasn’t quite the quality I was hoping for, but I was still hoping!
Well… this went much like Marine Corps… but not quite as bad. On pace at the 10k… on pace at the half… on pace at the 30k… and then started going backwards… I needed to hold 5 minute/km… I ended up holding 5:15’s… not bad, but it all came in the last 10k or so. As usual. I ended up doing a 3:42. 17 minutes faster than Marine Corps, but still 12 off of Boston.
Joanne, being the smarter one in the crowd, did the half and finished with a respectable 1:53… and a smile (as opposed to my 3:42 and a grimace!). Cool thing is… she won her age group! 1st out of 31 people in her age group! Not too shabby! Having said that, I actually place too! 3rd in my age group and 14th overall in the full marathon!
Um… did I mention the full was pretty small? Ya. 6 people in my age group! (about 150 in the full and 1000 in the half… or about 40,000 fewer people than Marine Corps Marathon!). But I’m not proud, I’ll take the bronze medal! (actually a bronze cow bell?!… but still, I’ll take it!).
And here is the 25th anniversary part of it… after the marathon we went to Atlantis for the full couples spa treatment and massage… and then a ride on the lazy river in the nice hot sun! Nice. (actually we stopped at McDonald’s after the marathon for some nutritious post-race refueling and the best quarter-pounder ever… then we went to the spa!)
All in all… a pretty great 25th anniversary/marathon/warm-weather-get-away trip!
Happy Anniversary Joey!
Cheers,
Rob