While I love St. Patrick’s Day, and this Achilles 5K race in particular… sadly, this was not to be one of my better races.

I think this is my 5th or 6th time running the Achilles St. Patrick’s Day 5K. It’s a nice, easy course that is fairly flat (except for that one damn bridge you have to run over twice). It’s a straight shot through Toronto’s financial district for most of it. which makes it a very easy course. I’ve put out some of my best times ever for a 5K on this course (my 5K PR is 26:06 on this course in 2017) so I know it well, and I usually expect to do pretty good on it.  Last year I was injured, and yet despite that, I still put out a decent time. But this year… something just felt off. I had trained… sorta. But as it seems to happen EVERY year before this race – I got sick and had to take an entire week off training. Couple that with a 10-day visit to Ottawa after I was sick, where I was unable to run outside since it was so snowy, and the wine consumption was a aplenty with my parents… I knew I was going to be in trouble for this race.

The morning of the race I felt fine-ish? I’d slept better than I normally do before a race but I just didn’t feel… great. I felt like my body was sluggish and not in shape (which isn’t the case overall, but I just had an overwhelming sense of “I’m bloated”).

They’ve expanded the race to also include a 10K course (it’s a double loop of the 5K route) which means there were even more people at the start line. And sadly… the starting zone was only about one lane (maybe 2?) of traffic and it took a long damn time of shuffling slowly after we’d started the race to even start running just because there were so many people. I’m sure that slowed me down a bit, but overall it was just me feeling not so hot throughout the entire race. It’s a rare occurrence for me where I’ll actually feel like I need to go to the bathroom during a race… but I basically felt that way the whole time throughout this one. Which is a very uncomfortable feeling!

So my race time ended up being 27:03… which is disappointing. I haven’t fallen into the 27 minute range in a while, so it felt like a massive let down to myself. And truly, it wasn’t an atrocious race – I didn’t get injured and nothing bad happened… it was just a bad race. Races like that are super disappointing… but sometimes they just happen.

Race Results

• Finish Time: 27:03
• Pace: 5:24 per kilometer
• Overall placement: 314/1374
• Age group placement (Female 30-39 years): 43/245
• Gender placement (F): 106/781