What a perfect morning for a half marathon race! My goal was 1:30:00 but the weather was perfect, I felt really good and God answered my prayers with an official time, and personal best, of 1:28:59 (that’s a 4:14 kilometer pace for 21.1km) and a chip time of 1:28:54 (obviously I was very well positioned being only 5 seconds behind the start line). The rest of my stats are available online at Sportstats. (For comparison, my fastest time on record, so far, had been 1:36:54 at the Ottawa Race Weekend 2009 Half Marathon last May.)

This being only the second annual Army Run, the race was still small in comparison with the Ottawa Race Weekend. There were just under half the number of participants at a total of 4270 runners which made it much more enjoyable for me. Don’t get me wrong: it’s awesome to see and be with all those runners but bigger crowds pose more logistical challenges than smaller ones.

This race was special, being a way for Canadian civilians to support their troops and for the troops to say “thanks” for the support. A cannon was fired instead of the usual blow horn for the start of the race, a group of injured soldiers (one single-leg amputee hoping to break a 1:20:00 record, one double-leg amputee and others in race wheelchairs) participated, military bands were playing at various locations throughout the course and a group of soldiers were just beyond the finish line handing-out the dog tag-style finisher medals. Pretty cool!

A military band at the start line.

My sprint to the finish line — you can see I’m just about to cross over and the official time clock reads 1:28:58.

Few! Those 16 weeks of hard training really paid off!!! 🙂

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Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 20th, 2009
Filed under General
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