A compilation of some of our race day photos
On Sunday, myself and a group of six of my awesome colleagues from Citizen Canada teamed up to run the Goodlife Fitness Marathon relay. The idea is that each runner completes a 5K leg of the full marathon, with the last runner completing the final 7K.
Weeks ago, my colleague Kathleen sent an email around to the team recruiting runners for this event. Originally, I thought I might do the half marathon so I declined. But after a hellish and freezing winter, I realized I was grossly underprepared and went back to Kathleen with my tail between my legs to see if I could still join the team. Luckily, I was able to sneak in. And at the last minute, I was volun-told to run 10K since one of our team members had to back out due to illness.
On paper, the marathon relay sounds like a great team building event… that is, until we realized that at no point, would we ever be together. But despite the fact that we were never physically together, we were all together in spirit. Every time someone tagged the next runner, we would get an email update or see an Instagram post to let us know we were on to the next stage. And despite the fact that our final runner had a minor hiccup in the relay transfer point, we finished the race with a glorious time of 3:47:11 – 19 minutes FASTER than our originally reported finish time.
Not going to lie, I was a little concerned I was going to get my first DNF when I saw an email from Graham, our second last runner saying he couldn’t find our final runner! Luckily, they found each other, and in a feat of superhuman strength, Graham managed to run 12K total, when he was only supposed to run 5K! Good work, my friend.
My 10K was a bit pokey. With a full-on headwind and a belly full of party treats from the day before, I was feeling slow and chunky. I managed a time of 57 minutes for my 10K. Not my finest accomplishment. Luckily, my speedy colleagues made up for it with their blazing fast 5Ks. Christine, our second runner, ran her 5K in 23 minutes! She claims it is due to her freakishly long legs but I think she might be concealing a Kenyan background.
I am so proud of our awesome team accomplishment. I am also exceedingly pleased to work with a group of fit, fun people who like to run. I am so happy I can share my passion with some of my colleagues… even if a few of them did it under duress.
Great work Team Citizen. You guys are the best.
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