Let me start out by giving a huge shout out to my race buddies, Ali and Jamie. What an awesome weekend of scheming and running!

For those who don't know, Around the Bay is the oldest road race in North America, and has been held every year in Hamilton since 1894. The full race is 30 km, but we each ran 1/3. I ran the 2nd (and shortest) leg, from the 10km mark to the 19.5km mark.

On Saturday evening, we all met in Burlington for some Thai food and for some pre-race scheming that continued on at my Grandma's house! You see, the typical relay runners have to meet at the start at 9:15 and take buses to their respective starting points where they just wait... How boring!



Instead, the Spatula Runners went to the starting line for a photo shoot. We also got to test my shoe pack to see if the chip registered while it was in there.

Go Spatula Runners! Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

We left Jamie in the throng of runners then walked to a spot on the route closest to Colin's parked car and waited for Jamie to run by. While we were there we saw the elite runners, who seemed to be sprinting, and Elvis!

I couldn't get over how fast they were running!

We found her! Photo courtesy of From Couch to Iron Woman

We then tried to drive to the relay exchange point, which proved to be a little bit difficult. Colin, Ali's hubby, did some amazing driving, but we still managed to get caught behind those crazy elite runners for a little bit. We got there with enough time for me to stand in the GIANT line-up for the port-o-potty's.

Jamie and I nearly missed each other at the exchange. We thought that there would be two sets of mats to record the relay times, so she was looking for one, and I was in the back of the pack stretching...

We got the chip and spatulas exchanged and I was on my way!


I started a bit too fast, as is typical for me in races. The first 3 km felt like they were dragging on and on and on. There were lots of nice people cheering, and some amazing people running and walking including:

...a helicopter

...3 people from Canadian Armed Forces and their packs

Seeing those things made me forget about carrying the spatulas!

The last 2/3 of my race went by much quicker. I had a few people ask me why I was carrying spatulas, so I told them about Ali's blog, and how we were there to 'spread the love'. One guy asked if they were in case anyone cut me off!

I was nervous I was going to drop my spatulas along the Burlington Lift Bridge. If I'd dropped them anywhere else they would have been easy to pick up. The Lift Bridge has an open deck, which means if I'd dropped them, they would have been in the bay... Good thing I held on tight!

Image courtesy of Running with Spatulas

That last hill got to me a little bit. All of my training has been in Toronto by the lake, which means very little elevation change. I walked a little bit, especially after my right knee started to hurt. It's normally my left knee that bothers me, I'm not quite sure what happened.   Thankfully this was at my 9 km mark, so I knew I only had 500m to go. Time to push through!

Photo courtesy of From Couch to Iron Woman

I saw Mike at the exchange point first - he was the lookout. He yelled at me to run to the right, so I immediately went left... Thankfully I managed to find the rest, get Ali the chip and spatulas, then she was on her way!

Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

 According to my watch, I'd run 9.5km in 1:05. Translated to a 10km race, my time would have been 1:08, still a personal best by 5 minutes! Makes me want to do a 'proper' 10k to get that made official!

I grabbed my food kit and water from the back of a van. Thankfully they had these vans rather than making us all wait until the end to get our race food. We walked to the car to drive back to Copps Colosseum. We managed to get into the same parking lot where we had started!

Jamie and I waited by the runner's entrance to Copps Colosseum, where we saw a disturbing number of people trip on the curb on the way in. Jamie spotted Ali first, so I sent a quick text to Colin and Mike to let them know she was on her way!

As a team, we finished in 3:12:41. Not too shabby!

Photo courtesy of Running with Spatulas

Please be sure to read Ali and Jamie's recaps as well. They also have much better pictures, taken with actual cameras. I only had my crappy blackberry camera with me.