Quebec in 2015
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Sub-5, finally!
Sightseeing before the running
We arrived in Quebec City on Friday afternoon, after getting lost at the entrance of the city. This always happens with us, we can never get into Quebec City at the right spot... Anyway, we arrived at the Museum of Fine Arts, where we spent the afternoon:
On Friday night we went to the expo to get my bib and other little things for the marathon:
At the end of the night we had dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant:
On Saturday morning we walked around the area:
Saturday we had lunch at the Café du Monde, one of our favourite places in Quebec:
In the afternoon we went on an excursion to see the Montmorency falls. It was a tourist trap, we never got closer than half a kilometer from the falls...
Our little hotel, on a quiet corner of the city:
The hotel was really small, here is its breakfast area:
The day of the running
My wife and I woke up early, shortly after 4 am, I got ready and we left our hotel room shortly after 5 am. Our intention was to walk from our hotel (very close to the Château Frontenac) to the Espace 400e Bell, where we would take the bus to the starting line. But when we were about to leave the hotel we met another runner who was waiting for his taxi, he invited us to join him on the cab ride. We accepted, of course.
There was some confusion about where the taxi should stop (the marathoners and the half-marathoners would take their buses in different spots), we almost gave up on going with him, but in the end we saw that the two places were close, so we could go together.
When we got to our spot, our fellow rider did not accept our money, so we just thanked him for the ride and walked the rest of the way to the buses.
Originally the trip to the starting point of the marathon should have been by ferryboat. My wife had chosen a hotel near the docks, so that we would be near the boat, but the organizers changed that and made us go by bus, which started from farther away. Oh well...
The trip took a little more than half an hour, it took us to Levis, the city on the other side of the St. Lawrence river.
We arrived there shortly after 6 am; the start of the marathon would be only at 7h30. I don't understand why they made us go to the start line so early, we could have easily slept another hour and it would not have made much of a difference to the organization of the event.
At around 6h30 an announcer came to the microphone and greeted the runners, he said he was a pastor and would share the word of the Lord with the runners at 6h45 at a place nearby. When he started saying that, I laughed, I thought it was a joke, but then he repeated the same comment in English, so I saw that he was being serious about it... :-)
At 6h45 I saw the pastor talking to a small group; not even a dozen people were with him. Pointing to all the other thousand runners, I said to my wife, jokingly: "band of heathens!" :-)
At 7h20 I said goodbye to my wife and went to the rear of the mass of people near the starting line.
At 7h30 we finally went, I must have crossed the starting line a minute or so after the leaders.
I embedded myself in the 4h45 group from the beginning. Usually I would go with the 5h bunny, but this marathon is smaller, they didn't provide a bunny for those who wanted to finish in five hours. The slowest bunny was the 4h45, so that's where I put myself. I had this crazy idea that maybe today I would be able to shave off fifteen minutes of my previous personal best...
The bunnies are not just pacemakers, they are coaches as well. For instance, when we started going up a particularly steep hill, our bunny said "Don't look at the ground, look at the top of the hill". It made a world of a difference! All psychological, of course, but it worked for me!
Right after km 29 I had to let go of the 4h45 crowd, I could no longer follow them at their pace; it was near the entrance of the bridge that separates Quebec from Levis:
After this point I was mostly alone. Of course there was still a ton of people around me, but each one was doing their own thing.
Around km 34 I hit the wall, I stopped to walk and could not make myself go back to jogging. I must have walked almost two kilometers! Some volunteers of the medical team asked me if I was ok (they could see I was struggling), but I assured them I could finish this by myself.
After what seemed to be an eternity, I resumed jogging. When I had to walk again, I did something new: I walked backwards! It seemed to help me!! After walking backwards a bit, I was ready to go forward jogging, I felt refreshed. It was a nice feeling after so many kilometers.
Less than two kilometers before the finish line my Garmin gave up the ghost and I was flying blind, I didn't know my time anymore. I knew if I were to make my sub-5, it would be very close.
The marathon finish line is near the Espace 400e Bell (the same place where we took the bus in the morning). There was a lot of people waiting for the marathoners, it was a big party.
Less than a hundred meters from the finish line I saw the big clock indicating 4h59m50s, so I gave a final sprint to try and cross before the five hour mark. I missed it by just a few seconds. But I knew that I had gotten my sub-5, because I had started my race a minute or so after the gun.
Here I am receiving my medal from a volunteer:
I sat down on these chair sculptures and stayed there for a long while...
On the way back to the hotel, we took the funiculaire, I was in no shape to go up all those stairs:
The medal shines small lights when you touch a mechanism at the back:
When we got to the apartment my wife checked the official site and confirmed my sub-5: 4h59m09s. Wow!!
For dinner, we went back to the same Italian restaurant that we had visited on Friday:
We ate different food but it was delicious as well.
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