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Ed's Sk8toronto Website
NATIONAL CAPITAL MARATHON -(OTTAWA) -MAY 2004 The National Capital Race Weekend in Ottawa, each May, is the biggest and best (local) inline event. It's a lot of fun. At one time there were two skating events but now there is only the marathon and half-marathon (which start at the same time). As well as skating, there are other several running and walking events of different lengths. I have set up this race elsewhere on this website (in my weblog) so I will not go overboard here except to say that this race was my first big test after a serious back injury. In general, I was pleased with my results. I had a good position at the gate and the start of the race went smoothly as far as I could see. The leaders did not go out particularly fast and there was a good opportunity for skaters to sort themselves out according to their expectations. It was not long before the inevitable surges started and skaters started to be dropped from the lead pack. For me, this is always the trickiest part of the race. I seem to have a tendency to end up in a small pack and do a lot more work during the race than would have been necessary (had I known the way things would work out). This race was not an exception. I never had any intention of skating with the really fast guys for long but you never know what will happen with the mere humans. By that I mean skaters like Herb Gayle, Bob Tysen, Morgan Williams and a few others. This is the group that I can skate with when I am on. Well, they were still chasing the superhumans when I decided that I liked the look of the group that was getting dropped at around the 5 mile mark and decided to stay with them rather that try to chase down my friends. In the long run it was a bad move. I should have given up the chase even earlier. For a while, there was a group of 4 guys. Then we picked up Tatia Wallace who had fallen off the pack in front. From around the 8k point to perhaps 38k I skated in a group of 4 or 5. There must have been 8 or nine people in the group at different times but the size stayed pretty constant and there were only 3 of us who stayed together for the whole time (Tatia, David Swan from Minneapolis and me). The 30k passed rather pleasantly and we all took our turns pulling but nobody was both willing and able to take the kind of wicked pulls that Bob Tysen is famous for and as a group we steadily lost ground to the pack of 20 or so behind us. When I first saw the trailing group at around the 31k mark I knew that our little pack was toast unless somebody showed a little more. It was not to be -and they caught us a few kilometers before the end. I was very interested to see how the 3 of us would do in the mad dash to the end since we had been doing so much pulling compared to the members of the big pack that had caught us. Well, David Swan came 2nd Tatia was 3rd and I managed a 5th place finish among our pack. Things could have been a lot worse that that. Tatia was first female and I managed to win my age group. Mere tenths of seconds behind were Alan McGregor, David Taras, Bob Harwell, Mau Pan Lau, Lionel Gagne, Guy Ethier and a few others that I was really happy to beat. I was glad that I decided not to wimp out of the big push to the finish line. I was pretty happy with the race. I skated as hard as I could and did not hurt myself. I think I will now have the confidence to ramp up my training on several fronts. I am looking toward skating Pro in Duluth. It's unfinished business.
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