I slept like hot garbage the night before the race, but no surprise there. Has anyone ever slept well the night before any race that they were running?

As I replay those first early morning moments in my mind, I really honestly don’t remember feeling nervous at all. I was certainly in high gear getting myself organized, showering, sorting myself all out and doing all the things, but for the life of me, I don’t recall being “nervous”.

My mom was totally mystified by me wanting to shower and straighten my hair before the race, but I did both things anyways (lol). I literally CHOKED down half of a bagel with jam, I had absolutely less than zero desire to eat anything at all, and I remember each bite going down like gravel, as if my body was physically rejecting every bit of it. I think I only got a little less than half of it down before I threw in the towel.

Matt, the boys and my Dad were still sleeping, and weren’t going to wake up for a little while longer, but my mom was planning to come down to the start corrals with me. I had repeatedly told her that she didn’t need to do that and that I would be fine on my own, but I have to admit, I was glad for the company in the morning, and for someone to chatter away a mile a minute to.

With my final band-aids applied to the arches of my feet, we were out the door and down to the start corrals. The street was JAMMED, and it was here I learned that just shy of 9,700 people were running this race.

And we were 1/6 people that were lucky enough to be selected. The Lulu power is strong.

It was an absolutely beautiful morning, cool and overcast, absolutely perfect conditions for running. There had been some concerns about the air quality leading up to the race because of the forest fires burning South of us in the Okanagan, but thankfully the wind had blown the right away, and air quality was a non-issue for the day of the race.

My mom took a few pictures of me, and then after a few minutes left me near the entrance to the corrals to head back up to the hotel room. Shortly after my mom left me, I got a text from my Dad saying that the boys were out on the balcony looking down at the corrals! I turned around and started jumping up and down and waving my arms like a crazy person, and saw the boys waving back from up on our balcony!! That was such a really special moment for me, I was absolutely elated to see them up there and probably jumped up and down waving for at least a full minute 🙂

As we were milling around, the pace bunny team arrived and I remember a big muscular Black guy yelling out:

“WAVE 4 HAS ENTERED THE CHAT, WAVE 4 HAS ENTERED THE CHAT”

They made me laugh a lot and I instantly eyed up the 3:00 pace bunny, because it was my goal to finish in under 3 hours. When it was finally time for Wave 4 (the last wave!) to enter the corrals, I did start to feel the nervous energy settling in. I somehow found myself close to the 2:55 pace bunny, and I latched onto her and another woman who was chatting with her. It seemed that they knew each other, and I later learned that they were both from Pennsylvania and ran in the same running club.

Although I had high hopes of staying with the 2:55 group, as they were talking about times and splits, I started to feel more and more nervous. I replay this moment as a bit of an error in my overall race plan, and in hindsight, I think it would have been wiser for me to start (and stay) with the 3:00 group throughout the race. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I chatted a little bit with the pace bunny and the other woman, and learned that the pace bunny was actually just over 20 weeks pregnant with her first baby! I truly had no idea, her stomach looked flat and hard as a rock to me, so I was truly shocked, and also totally impressed that she was pacing a half marathon at this point, but hey, some people just put the rest of us to shame LOL

As Waves 1, 2 and 3 slowly got on their way, I started to feel more and more nervous. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I was truly concerned that if things didn’t go according to plan that I was in real jeopardy of not finishing the race under the 3:30 cutoff time. Lululemon had sent out an email a couple of days before the race that had been extremely clear, and also extremely firm that there were very strict cut-off times and checkpoints along the way, and if you reached a checkpoint on the course too late, that there would be buses waiting to take you off the course and back to the finish line. The email made my blood run cold, and I was really concerned, even though the vast majority of my races had been well under the cutoff pace.

A brief aside to explain some of this concern: when we had been up in Red Lake, I had done a 15km run with Matt’s Dad, Roy. The run had gone absolutely terribly; there is absolutely no way that I would have finished it without Roy being there encouraging me to just walk the rest of it, take breaks etc. When we finally did finish the 15, I was absolutely horrified to look at my watch and find out that the pace that we had run would have been nearly 10 minutes slower than the cutoff time.

Now – there were a lot of things that played into that 15km, like we had stopped to talk with Matt and the boys at a couple of spots along the way, the heat was extreme that day, and the Highway 125 between Cochenour and Red Lake is absolutely ruthless with hills. But still. Never in my distance race career have I ever even considered a cut-off time when I ran a race, and it was a really unsettling feeling.

Stripping away the fear, rational facts and data told me that I should be okay, but, my pacing was such that I did not have a big margin for error or disaster. One thing that nearly a decade of distance racing had taught me before I started having kids was that literally anything can happen out on a race course. And the simple reality was that I didn’t have a lot of time for anything to go wrong in this one. It played on my mind for the last several weeks of training and all the way up to the start line of the race.

After our 15km run up in Red Lake, Matt’s dad Roy had waited until we left for home, and then sent me a really long text with some advice (he knows me well enough to know to wait until I had left to send this LOL). He has a lot of experience running and with distance race, and I really value his opinion, so really appreciated what he had to say. The main message that he had given me was that he felt that I needed to go out a little bit slower than I had been. He suggested a slower start, a run / walk middle, and then I should still have some energy to finish the race really strong.

In any case, we shuffled along like cattle in the corrals, and finally, Wave 4 was cleared to go, and we started to move towards the starting line. Even after our official start, it took me a few more minutes to officially cross the line. As we got closer and closer the energy was HUGE. There were hundreds of spectators along the sidelines, a DJ was setup right at the starting line and a Shakira song was BLASTING as we crossed the line. We were off! I always love the first few steps of a race because it feels like it’s time to stop thinking and worrying and time to start actually doing something about it.

The first kilometre of the race was just a crazy blur of bright coloured Lululemon clothing, loud cheering, music, and nervous energy starting to dissipate from the runners. I had no idea what I was doing in terms of pace, I was kind of just shuffling along with the pack. I saw my mom on my left hand side somewhere before the first kilometre marker, yelling and cheering with her phone out. She was alone, and I didn’t see Matt, my Dad or the boys, so I was a bit confused about where they had ended up. Matt had given me a few options of places that they were going to try and get to to see me, and the first one was about 3km in, so I figured they must have gone straight there.

There was really nothing exciting to report from the first 1 – 3 kilometres of the race. I settled into my groove around 1km, and was passing lots of people early in the race. I vaguely remember crossing the Granville Bridge somewhere between 1-3km and feeling giddy with excitement as we ran by the Vancouver FIFA stadium. There were so many people still all around me so there wasn’t really a lot of thought to pace or anything except the excitement of starting the race.

Just before the first aid station at 3km, there was a Lululemon cheer station, and they had set up about 25 Peloton bikes and had people taking a full on live Peloton class right there on the side of the road! I had a good laugh at that, and the people on the bikes were holding up funny signs, I remember one saying “I WISH I WAS YOU RIGHT NOW” that made me laugh.

I was feeling great by the first aid station. Zero issues with my body, my breathing, anything at all. I didn’t need water or anything else from the aid station because I was carrying my own water and still had lots left, so I ran right through and kept on going. My running app was talking to me in my ears and told me that my first 3km I was under 8 minute kilometre pace, so I knew that I was way ahead of where I needed / even where I wanted to be. Unfortunately I never did see Matt and the boys, and I learned later that they weren’t able to get to their spot at 3km, and ended up jumping further ahead on the course, but I was looking around like crazy for them as we passed through the 3km – 5km sections.

Kilometre 4 of the SeaWheeze course is entirely uphill. I knew this hill, I had studied the elevation map of the entire course, and I knew this one was going to be nasty. When the grade started to change, I remember thinking “here we go”….

But as it turns out, I crushed that kilometre 4 hill. I ran the entire way up, passed about 200 people all walking, and just felt like the little engine that could chugging up the hill.

“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” (lol)

By the time I got to the top, I was so elated to turn the corner and find that we had a HUGE stretch of downhill on the other side! I cruised down and felt like a 5 year old running to the swing set. I was on top of the world, and full of confidence at that point. I was so happy about how that hill had gone.

What ended up being a pretty major issue for me did come up around 4km, and that was simply that I needed to use the washroom. I’ve never had to go to the washroom during any race that I’ve ever done (including 8+ hours on the IronMan 70.3 course), so it just wasn’t something that I ever thought about at all. I guess having three babies changed my bladder somewhat (lol) and I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to tough this one out, I was going to have to stop.

Somewhere between 5km and 6km, there was a single porta-potty set up, and I saw an opportunity to stop. The problem was that there was already a line of 8-10 people waiting for it. I was still absolutely crushing my target pace, but after waiting nearly 4 minutes for one person to come out of the porta-potty, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to wait for 10 people to use the washroom, without blowing my whole race up. In a complete panic, I ended up running away from that stop and back onto the course after about 5-6 minutes of waiting, without actually getting to go.

I was incredibly stressed at this point, because I knew that I really needed to go, and also knew that I didn’t have 40 minutes to wait in line. I did my best to just put it out of my mind, but with every step, the situation was getting more urgent, and I started to understand why Olympic marathoners just pee and poop themselves right on the course LOL

At some point while I was waiting in line for that porta-potty, the 2:55 pace bunny group that I had started the race with ran by me on the side of the road. That was so disappointing for me, because I had had such a strong first 5km, and knew that I was WAY ahead of my target pace. And the worst part of all, was that I was still feeling great, aside from desperately needing to pee! I did my best to keep the 2:55 pace bunny within my sight for a while, and I did for about 2km, and then gradually they started to slip away. I was disappointing, but reminded myself that my goal all along had been under 3:00, and that was still very much in the realm of possibility. But it all depended on the washroom situation.

Between 5.5km and 8km, I was basically just trying not to pee my pants the entire time. I was still running at a good pace (thank you five years of pelvic floor physiotherapy for this – if this didn’t prove how effective it was, nothing will), but was nearly shaking while doing so. I vaguely remember seeing a crew of runners wearing different combinations of neon pink outfits that had actually dipped into a Tim Hortons and gotten breakfast sandwiches, and were strolling along the course eating them LOL I liked this group’s energy, they seemed SUPER chill, and like they were genuinely just out for a good time, which reminded me not to take any of this so seriously, and that this was supposed to be fun! Or you know, as much fun as something can be when you’re about a nano second from peeing your pants and you have to keep running anyways 🙂

Where things took a turn in my race was just passed the 8km mark. I was absolutely desperate to use the washroom, and when I came up to the next bank of porta-potties, even though there were about 10 people in line (again), I just had to stop. I knew that I couldn’t wait anymore, and that I also couldn’t waste anymore time waiting without actually getting to go, and I would just have to suck it up and wait in line.

There was another girl in front of me who was anxiously eying her watch and said something like “are we seriously going to not finish on time because of a bathroom stop???” I totally confidently told her “we’re going to be fine, we’ve got this, we’ve got lots of time”, which was absolute and complete horse shit coming from me, because I was completely freaking out about the same exact thing. At some point while I was standing in line, I sent a quick text to Matt telling him what was going on. I knew that he was watching my splits online, and I knew that he would be worried because it would look like I fell off a cliff after 5km. The line moved faster thankfully, but still not fast enough. Unfortunately, a few minutes after I had gotten into line, the 3:00 pace bunny ran by us.

I can’t totally describe the feeling of seeing her run by, but it was just devastating; my heart absolutely sank like a stone. I was so frustrated with myself, with my stupid, useless bladder and just with the whole situation. I felt like I had worked so hard to put myself ahead of the game up until this point, and then in an instant (or 20 of them, actually), it was just all over. I ended up waiting in line for that porta-potty for over 20 minutes. I finally, FINALLY got in, peed the fastest pee of my literal life, and then came out of the porta-potty like a bat out of hell.

Enter Stage Left: Irrational Sara.

When I came out of that bathroom, I’m telling you, all intelligent life-form left my body, and I truly thought to myself “okay Sara, you’re going to SPRINT after that pace bunny until you hunt her down and pass her”. And that is what my dumb ass attempted to do. I set off at an all-out sprint down the road like some kind of psycho, my breathing absolutely ragged, my legs and body totally confused and I just put my head down and ran like I was on fire.

As I know that I don’t need to tell you: that was fucking stupid.

I made it a TOTALLY impressive 800 metres or so, and then abruptly had to stop and walk (duh). And when I pulled up to a walk, an all-too familiar feeling started in my ribcage, and started to creep up my torso.

I was starting into a panic attack.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this story, unfortunately I’ve been struggling with panic attacks on and off this year. I’ve had enough of them now that I can pretty quickly identify what’s happening, but that doesn’t make them any less scary. This particular one was almost entirely centred on my ribs, and my ability to breathe. I started to feel like my sports bra and my shirt was WAY too tight, and was constricting me from breathing, and I started to claw and pull at my clothes like some kind of rabid animal in a desperate attempt to pull them away from my ribs and help me breathe. I was fully walking at this point, and truly felt like my day was over. My breathing was really jagged and shallow and I was audibly making weird sounds of distress (embarrassing).

Matt had sent me a text back that my entire family was waiting for me at the 10km point of the race, which was only about a half kilometre from where I was. My brain had completely left the building, and I was not making rational decisions at this point; so I figured my best bet was to run, walk or crawl to my family and see if they could help me in any way.

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