This next part of my SeaWheeze journey is the part that I regret and wish that I could change more than anything. I would keep all of the bumps and hiccups along the way, if only I could change this one interaction.

While I battled against the feeling that I couldn’t breathe and sheer panic, I continued power-walking along, crossing the Burrard Bridge, which was very cool, but I was in no shape to appreciate it at all. I knew that I was getting close to the 10km mark, and was absolutely frantic to get to Matt and my family, thinking that somehow they might be able to help me turn around the hot mess express that I was currently the captain of.

As I got to the other side of the bridge, I think it was Austin that I saw before anyone else, bopping up and down and waving his arms in the air. As I got a little closer, I could see the rest of the gang, and I saw Kyle break free from the pack and his little legs sprinting towards me. The boys were so excited to see me.

I hate this part of my race story. I just hate it. But the truth is that I was in such bad shape physically and mentally that I don’t think that I even smiled at my boys. I’ve seen a video of our interaction at the end of the bridge, and I do put out my hand and wave at them, and I do call out “I love you”, but I may as well be a talking corpse. There is no emotion in my face or body at all, I don’t even look happy to see them. And I hate myself for it, truly. If I could change anything about my race, it wouldn’t be the bathroom stop, the panic attack, my pace or any of it. I would have changed that one minute at the end of the Burrard Bridge. I would have just forced myself to fake it, for just one minute, even 30 seconds, to give them the big positive reaction that they had been waiting for all morning.

But sadly, I can’t change it.

As I passed the boys, I looked up at Matt and my parents. Matt was smiling and said “you’re doing a great job”, and I shook my head at him and said “I’m in trouble”. He shook his head and said “no you’re not, just keep going”. I looked at my mom and for some reason, I asked her if she had any water. I still had some water in my water bottle, but I was getting low, and I guess sub-consciously thought that that might help? She dropped her backpack right on the ground and dove headfirst into it, and came out with a carton box of water (when in Vancouver….? lol). I fumbled with unscrewing the lid of my bottle and she poured the water into it for me. While she poured the water, I was still gasping for breath and I said something to her about things not going well.

My mom came up with the best advice of the day (this story is going to get positive again SOON, promise!). She looked up at me with concern and said “you’re running too fast, Sara. You’ve got to slow down, just slow down, take it easy.”

While that seems like pretty simple, obvious advice, it really sunk in for me, and I kept her words in my mind as I said goodbye to them and carried on (at a walking pace). I had a LONG drink of water, took a big deep breath, and could feel the panic attack subsiding a little bit. Between 10km and 11km, I haphazardly ran / walked with absolutely zero rhyme or reason, just running for short stretches at a time, VERY slowly, and then slowing up even further to walk when I started to feel fatigue creeping in. It wasn’t pretty, but it was making progress, and my running app alerted me in my ears that my kilometre pace between 10 and 11km was right on 9-minutes even, which is crazy slow, but by my math, would have me finishing the race suitably under the cut-off time, which gave me some hope.

ALRIIIIIGHHHT – enough of the serious-Suzie talk, are we ready for this story to turn around here?!

If 8.5km was a turning point in my race for the negative, things turned around for the positive for me at about 11.5km, when I passed through the aid station.

As I passed through the aid station, there were tons of Lululemon people cheering for us, several of them cheered for me by name (because it was printed on my bib), and I started to feel the positive energy coming back into me. But that wasn’t what turned my race around.

The aid stations were set up so that the first half of the station was offering cups of water, and the second half was offering electrolytes as we passed through. I hadn’t been taking anything from the aid stations up until this point, because I had had my water with me. But as I progressed through the second half of that 11.5km aid station, a very pretty Asian girl with long shiny black hair looked right at me, pointed her finger and said “YOU look like a girl that could use some electrolytes!” and thrust a paper cup at me.

Without thinking too much, I took the cup and tossed it back like a Tequila shot circa 2008 (IYKYK). It didn’t taste good at all, like cold salt water with the faintest tinge of orange. But the exact second that that drink hit my body, it was like the elixir of life and I knew that I was going to be okay. It felt like a fog had lifted, like I could see and hear more clearly. I was desperate for more, and greedily lunged for two more paper cups from the next volunteers and immediately drank both of those cups too, and then even grabbed one more from the very last volunteer as I left the station.

Those electrolytes felt SO SO SO good, I can’t even begin to describe it. The most important change that I felt as soon as I had them on board was that I felt my brain come back online from it’s temporary short-circuit. As I left the 11.5km aid station, I took a huge breath, gave my head a shake, and thought to myself, “Okay. Let’s get ourseleves back on track here.”

Rather than continue the haphazard, sloppy run / walk that I had done for the last couple of kilometres, I decided on the fly that I would walk about 2/3 of each kilometre, and run the first 1/3 at a pretty decent pace to try and net out to a slow jog pace. I tried this out starting at 12km, and ran at a really good pace for the first 350 metres, and then power-walked the rest of the kilometre. It felt a little conservative, and like maybe I could have run more, but I decided to err on the side of caution, and keep rolling with that plan, because it felt pretty good.

After about 2 kilometres like this, my running app alerted me that I was holding steady at pretty much exactly 9-minute kilometres even, and I think I actually said out loud to myself “okay, this is working”.

L-O-S-E-R.

Thank the Lord that with this new strategy in hand, I was able to relax a little bit and enjoy a little bit of the rest of the race. Oh my goodness, it’s a gorgeous course. Kilometres 12 – 20 of the SeaWheeze course take you right out of the Vancouver downtown core, out around the perimeter of Stanley Park, and down to the sea wall. And I’m so happy to report that I truly enjoyed this part of the race. The views were absolutely nothing short of spectacular, I held firm to my run / walk strategy, and the kilometres just started to tick by.

There were lots of fun cheer stations around the sea wall: people out on stand up paddle boards in the bay cheering us on, I ran past a group that were dressed as mermaids sitting on a big pile of rocks and waving at us, Saje had a station set up and was misting aromatherapy out onto the course, it was all pretty cool!

I took 3-4 cups of electrolytes at every aid station, and everyone felt even better than the last one did. It is so obvious to me now that I was pretty severely dehydrated from the first 11km and was in desperate need of some salt. I really thought that water would be enough, but it turns out that it just wasn’t. I’m so so so grateful to that girl at the 11km aid station who identified this for me – without a doubt, she saved my race.

Somewhere around 14 or 15km, I started to feel the troublesome arches of my feet acting up, and I knew that I was developing a blister, but I could tell that they weren’t too bad, and I wasn’t too worried, given where I was on the course. I knew that we were nearing the end, and at this point, a couple of blisters weren’t going to stop me!

As we meandered our way around Stanley Park, my neon pink friends and I were constantly trading off passing each other. They were still having a blast, and at this point of the race, I was in a much better state of mind (and body) as well, and so at one point, I came up behind them and said something like, “Hey Pink Team, can I hang with you?!”, and they were all so great and cheered and high-fived me. I told them that I had been stalking them for the whole race, and they all laughed and one guy said, “No, WE’VE been stalking YOU for the whole race!”. They were lots of fun, I admired their super chill energy and how much fun they were having.

I didn’t stay with my pink friends for long, I was a woman on a mission and was absolutely steadfast in my plan to continue to the finish line. I was repeatedly doing the 9 minute kilometre math and trying to configure a way that would get me to the finish line under 3 hours from when I started. It wasn’t completely out there, but I figured unless I started running again at less than 8-minute kilometre pace (like I had for my first 8km), it wasn’t going to happen. I was disappointed, and also just a bit embarrassed overall by the fact that I was walking such a high percentage of the last half of the race, but I just resolutely tried to put that out of my mind and keep powering on. I must have looked r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s power walking along, I felt like I was 75 or something, but knew that what I was doing was working well for me, and so onwards we marched.

As each kilometre ticked by, I knew that I was almost there, and I was so tempted to try to run more of each kilometre, but I swear the universe put a warning out to me just before the 18km marker, when I saw a reasonably fit guy kneeling on the ground, surrounded by medical staff, VIOLENTLY vomiting over the side of the sea wall. Aside from being horrible, it was also a totally sobering reminder that it didn’t matter how close you were to the end, your race could still be over at any minute. I made a conscious choice to stick to my plan and not to push it too hard, for risk of giving it all away this close to the end.

I knew that we were really getting close as we finished the Stanley Park portion of the race and started to make our way back into the downtown core. We started to see other people walking the opposite way as us with medals around their necks, and one of the runners near me yelled out to one of them “Show us what we’re running for!”, and the guy walking down the road held up a gorgeous turqoise-y blue medal for us to see with a big smile, and yelled back, “Go get yours!”.

We crossed the 20km marker, and I decided that I was going to run the last 600 metres to the finish line. Just as I started running the final stretch, I saw Matt and the boys on the right hand side of the road. Matt had the biggest smile ever on his face and was frantically waving his one arm, his phone in his other hand, and it looked like Austin and Carter were right in the middle of a big fight with each other, which made me shake my head lol good to know that some things never change….

The big energy of the finish line was getting closer and closer, I could feel it. I knew that I had made a good decision to play it conservative with my run / walk strategy because the more that I ran, the worse that I was feeling, and I was glad that I hadn’t pushed it earlier in the race. There was nothing to save it for now, this was it.

The arches of my feet were stinging terribly at this point, I knew that I had developed bad blisters (again), but didn’t care about that and just powered on. Very shortly after I saw Matt and the boys, the corrals returned back on the sides of the street and it was a straight funnel down to the finish line. The whole adventure, the whole day, all of it ran through my mind in that final 30 seconds. I knew that I had it, knew that nothing was going to take it from me at this point, and I could feel the emotion building up in my chest. This time, it was all positive.

I didn’t plan to do anything crazy when I crossed the finish line, but for some reason I aggressively threw my hands up in the air like a fool, and the race photographers captured this picture haha… such a dork…

As I crossed the line, it was like there was no more liquid in my eyes (lol) and I kind of heaved a few times with emotion. A medical guy came running over to me and asked if I was okay, and I couldn’t really say anything except choke out one word:

“Happy”

He gave me a pat on the shoulder and said “well done, go get your medal”, and I wandered a little further down the chute until I came to the medal hander-outers (lol). An older man with an accent of some sort put my medal around my neck and I was absolutely shocked at how heavy it was. I was so tired at this point that the weight of the medal physically brought my head forward! I saw my mom and Kyle (who looked a bit exasperated by the whole thing and was wearing very funny looking noise canceling headphones over his ears), and then as I progressed further down the chute, I saw my dad, Matt and the other two boys had all come together on the other side of the barrier. I gave them all big hugs over the fence, and then kept walking down the chute to get my finishers hat (lol) and some box full of food that they were giving away for breakfast.

Before I exited the chutes, I came across my neon pink crew that I had been passing back and forth all day! They saw me before I saw them, and yelled out “HAYYYYYY” haha, and I gave them all high-fives and thanked them for carrying me along for a little bit, I had really appreciated their energy out on the course!

My legs were fried at this point, and I absolutely did not want to walk anymore, but I made my way out of the chute finally, and met up with my family outside of the fenced off area. I was so happy to get to them, and the boys were excited to see the medal! Thankfully our hotel was so close to the start / finish areas, and it was less than a 5 minute walk back to the hotel. We meandered through the crowd, in through the lobby, and then I very nearly threw up in the elevator on the way up to our room (lol). Nearly every floor’s button had been pressed, and after a few floors I said out loud to Matt “I think I’m going to be sick”, and all of the other people in the elevator were totally horrified and quickly backed themselves into the opposite corner as far away from me as possible LOL I don’t blame them!

From there on, it was full celebration mode. My arches were shredded, as I had expected, but other then that, I was really no worse for wear. I had the best shower ever, and then we went down for lunch in the restaurant off of the hotel lobby, soaked in the hot tub for a while and tried to remain horizontal as much as possible (lol). My feet were pretty sore and I was finding it hard to walk wearing any kind of shoe, so was a bit ginger getting to dinner downtown at the Cactus Club (another restaurant that I’ve been to with work many times!), but by the next morning, things were feeling a lot better already.

My official chip-time for the SeaWheeze half marathon was 3 hours, 17 minutes. My family and friends have all been very quick to jump to my defense and say that since I had waited in a line for the washroom for over 20 minutes, technically, I did achieve my goal of sub-3. I’m choosing not to look at it that way, for a number of reasons.

The most important reason, is that it was never about the number. 3:17 is crazy slow. Over an hour slower than the last half marathon that I ran. But, this race was not about speed, or PBs or anything of the sort. It was very simply about proving to myself that a little piece of the person that I was before 2017 is still in here. That I can be a person that finishes what she starts. That doesn’t give up on anything when the going gets tough. Least of all herself. I achieved that in Vancouver, so I’m happy.

The other reason (and this is the far less emotional, and more practical one), is that Matt’s dad was 100% right, I went out way too fast. The pace that I was running for the first 8km would have had me finishing well under 2:55, closer to 2:50, which would have been totally awesome, but was never going to happen. So, when I take a really hard look in the mirror, the washroom situation might have actually been the universe having my back a little bit. Forcing me to break rhythm and stop, and then when sheer stupidity took over, dropping a panic attack on my head to FORCE me to slow the fuck down.

Woo-woo? Maybe. But I don’t know, it’s just how I’m looking at it. I really feel like if the washroom stop hadn’t happened the way that it did, and I had just kept steaming along the course running under 8-minute kilometres, that there was a very real possibility that I would have crashed and burned, and not finished the race at all.

We’ll never know. And that’s the beauty of it all.

I’ll take my 3:17, and I’m proud of it. I have a benchmark for any future races that I might want to do, and I learned a LOT about myself, my new fitness level and what my new body is capable of out on the SeaWheeze course. Next race, I’ll be just a little bit smarter. But not too smart. I’ve always believed that distance racing is as much about heart as it is about brains.

I had the best Sunday in Vancouver with my family after the race, we drove up the Highway to Whistler (a drive that I did many times when I worked out here), and took the Peak 2 Peak gondola ride across Blackcomb to Whistler Mountain, and it was just unbelievable. I can’t remember the last time that I felt so alive as I did that day up on the mountains.

We flew home on Monday, and I completely was in disbelief at the change in my mental state from Thursday evening when I had left Toronto to Monday afternoon flying home. I felt so much more at peace.

There aren’t enough words for how grateful I am that I had the opportunity to run SeaWheeze this year. It feels like this landed in my lap at just the exact right moment, and I am forever so thankful.

Until the next one… 🙂

-Sara xo

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