A great winter getaway choice, egged on by my travel agent friend who has a friendship with the Marathon Bermuda Race Director and was boosting the race in her social media, which sucked me in. First visit to Bermuda, flying in on Thursday afternoon and to a hotel near Nassau downtown. In fact, the race start was only 50 meters from my hotel, and the finish line 500 meters away.
As most of you know the weather in the Northwest was snowy, icy and cold throughout late December and into January, so my long runs were not optimum. Did get a 33K in a month before, but nothing longer than 16K after. Just to add to the fun, I did the Susan G. Komen Bahamas Race for the Cure 5K on Saturday morning. And if you looked at the “Return of the Pace Fairy” post in Yammering, I did it in a pink tutu.
Race start time on Sunday was an early 6:00am in order to get out of some of the heat and humidity and minimize the traffic disruptions through the downtown tourist area, as there were four giant cruise ship in port that day and the first mile of the race was right through the main tourist shopping district. So it was nice that my hotel room was so near the start, that I could set my alarm for just before 5:00am, instead of say 4:00am if I had to travel any distance to the start. Race morning weather brought us nice cloudy skies, temps in the mid 70F, but strong winds. Winds were nice for cooling and blowing out the humidity, but it also meant strong headwinds on the return out and back from mile 17 to the finish. Only significant hills were the back to back bridges from downtown Nassau over to and back from the Atlantis Resort. Otherwise is was mostly a beautiful Oceanside route, going through both some sketchy areas to million dollar homes of the wealthy on the other side of the island. As with most race these days, the number of participants around you dropped off significantly once the Half Marathoners did their turn around. And you had the occasional relay runner blowing by you.
Still managed to run the whole route with a slowing pace, but not too bad. Came 46/110 overall, finishing in 4:31:34 Gun time, for 5th in my 55-59 Age Group. Celebratory lunch of conch fritters and grill shrimp at the Fish Fry area of Nassau. One more day in the warmth before I fly back to Toronto on Tuesday. YAY!
10K Pace | Half Pace | 30K Pace | Net Pace
1:02:13 10:01 2:14:19 10:18 3:12 10:19 4:31:11 10:21
