8KM Race Results

A very interesting race to say the least. I was well prepared for this race as I had done lots of stretching, pre race warm up runs (at home and at race location) and a well balanced breakfast. I traveled to the racing event with the support of my wife and child for the second year in a row.

Upon arrival it was great to see all of the other racers and say "hello" to some familiar faces. For this race it is a 4KM out to a turn and return to the finish line. Unfortunately for myself and 3 others there was no cone set out to indicate where to turn around, so we ran an additional almost half a kilometre without knowing we should turn. For myself I was extremely focused and running a great race to stay near the front of the race with the leading 3 racers. I should have turned around when I noticed on my Garmin smart watch that we had run 4KM however I was laser focused on maintaining a strong pace while following the 3 fast runners who led the race, and there was NO cone put out to show us where to turn. Another racer behind us noticed the issue and moved a cone on the side of the road to the middle of the road so the rest of the runners would know where to turn. Long story short, I was devastated after being in 4th place to then running near the middle of the pack because of a technical issue. So with all of the frustration I had built up I was running as fast as I possibly could to try and catch up to where I was, sadly I was too far behind and ended up finishing somewhere in the middle of group.

After running past the finish line, myself and the 3 other racers were talking with the race officials about the turn around issue and showed our watches where we all had the distance of 8.88 KM while everyone else had a distance of about 8KM. The race officials were upset for us about the problem and wanted to know what our pace was, to compare with other racers. Long story short, thankfully the race officials honoured our efforts as the top 4 racers as we all had a faster pace than everyone else. So in the end with the technical issue of the race I placed 4th overall and 1st in my age group. Thank you to everyone who helped out for the event and the KRRA (Kingston road runners association.

I am training and looking forward to the next race in a month, a 5KM race.

This video is from the start of the 8KM race.