I was a bit apprehensive about getting up for parkrun last weekend, as I was only three days back from Canada and still very jetlagged (alarms had been soundly ignored by my body clock for the previous couple of days). Nevertheless, parkrunday vibe always does the job, so I was at Jesmond Dene in plenty of time on a fairly damp morning.
It was a classic ‘I’ll just take it easy’ run round Jesmond Dene – slow mile up the hills, steady mile on the flat, faster mile down the hill once you’ve decided to pretend it was always meant to be a progression. Lovely morning out.
I had known about Toronto Marathon (and its sub-distance races) for a few years. It’s internationally notorious for being chaotic at best – I’ve seen runners from Toronto online saying they consider the Toronto Waterfront Marathon (held in the autumn) to be the ‘real’ Toronto Marathon – so I didn’t want to risk entering the full distance at this event, as marathons are hard enough without dealing with bad race organisation. However, I was keen to do one of the shorter races to see for myself what the event was like, and as Geth and I were planning a visit to Toronto this spring anyway (as part of his work during his sabbatical and also to see our new baby niece along with the rest of the family), I made sure the dates lined up.
A week and a half of away-from-home eating in the run-up to the race meant that preparation was not ideal, but I was still confident that I’d do quite a bit better than my last half marathon attempt at Middlesbrough two months previously. For a start, I had actually been able to train this time round, even though my mileage wasn’t quite back where I wanted it yet and I was spending two days a week cross-training on the bike rather than doing the kind of runs I normally would.
I didn’t want to leave anything too vital in my drop bag, so race morning found me padding through the streets of downtown Toronto in my Vaporflys with my running sunglasses on despite the fact that the sun had yet to rise. A line of yellow school buses were waiting to take us to the start (my first time on a yellow school bus!) and it was a fairly calm and straightforward journey despite the cold and the potholes.
Shuttle buses for the morning!
The bag drop (supervised by a very efficient British volunteer) was easy to find when we arrived at the start. I had planned to leave dropping my bag for as long as I could due to the cold – I was very reluctant to remove my hoodie! – but I soon realised that there was a nice warm indoor space where runners were congregating, so I got my bag on the truck and my foil blanket on myself and settled down in the nearby mini-mall for an hour.
The start line was the first problematic bit. The volunteers wouldn’t let us into our pre-arranged corrals as they were already full! This meant having to cram in further back and get as far forward as I could, but there came a point where I couldn’t move any more as it was too crowded.
Start line skyline.
We were allowed to start ten minutes after the first corral, which I did appreciate, as the website had originally said 20 minutes. Due to the crowds and being further back than I should have been, I spent the first half of the race weaving and overtaking people. I did feel pretty strong at this point, but it would have been nice to have a clearer run.
The only real inclines were in the first few miles so it was great to get them out of the way. Most of the route was downhill, to the extent that I was really grateful for all the work I’d done on the bike during training as I don’t think my quads would have coped so well otherwise!
It was really interesting to see Toronto become more ‘downtown’ as we ran south. The skyscrapers became denser and the crowds became bigger. The vibe was great and it really felt like a proper big city race.
At this point (around halfway) we were starting to run into the back of the marathoners (who had started an hour before us and were doing a similar route but with lots of extra nooks and crannies to make up the miles), so the congestion never really eased at any point!
The atmosphere at halfway was amazing – we were properly into the city centre now and the crowds had really made an effort. My favourite sign was ‘May the Course Be With You’ – a good one for the day before Star Wars Day 😀
I did feel myself slowing down quite a bit around miles eight to twelve, and found that I was starting to be overtaken rather than overtaking. I was having a lot of aches and pains: my lower back had seized up a bit and my soleus was really aching (something I hadn’t experienced since Manchester Marathon a couple of years ago). At this point, though, I’d broken the back of it and was just counting down the miles. I do need to work on avoiding that fade and achieving a steadier run.
I glanced at my watch when it buzzed for mile twelve. 1:49 on the clock and I’d only slowed to ten-minute miles, so I knew if I stepped it up a bit I could sneak in under two hours even with the expected GPS extra bit. I put the effort in and kept my eyes ahead. The finish straight was confusing, because the marathoners were sent off to the left and the half marathoners straight ahead into the finish… but where was it? Watch was ticking over, 1:59:00, 1:59:30, 1:59:38, and I was panicking because it still wasn’t there. All I could do was run as fast as I could and hope. But then we rounded a corner and it was right in front of us, and I sprinted. 1:59:45 over the line. Still more than four minutes slower than my PB, but a sub-2 and nearly ten minutes faster than Middlesbrough so I’ll take it!
The finish area was mad. We spent about 20 minutes moving extremely slowly through a finish funnel and at one point were handed tiny cups of water. Then we emerged into a giant crowd of people moving in all directions – it was impossible to tell which way you were supposed to go – and in this giant crowd we had to FIND the medal-givers like an insane real-life game of Where’s Wally. They even had the bright red t-shirts on!
The medal was GIGANTIC.
Bigger than your face.
After that, weighed down by this dinner plate of a medal, we had to fight our way into the race goodies area, which was full of people going absolutely feral trying to get as many protein drinks and bars as they could get away with, and volunteers yelling at people for being in the wrong banana queue. Having run this gauntlet I finally encountered a volunteer (another Brit) who was pointing people towards bag collection. I’d been in the finish ‘system’ for long enough that I was getting pretty cold, so I was glad to be reunited with my hoodie.
I hadn’t collected absolutely all of the snacks I was entitled to in the Hunger Games arena, but at that point I just wanted out of there, so I followed the crowd in the hope of finding an exit. It took another ten minutes or so to get through said exit, but I could see Geth waving at me and eventually I managed to get to him (and the extra hoodie and non-carbon shoes he’d brought for me). He was a bit jealous of the enormous half marathon (and marathon) medals, as he’d done the 10k and they got a normal-sized one.
Medal size comparison.
(I was amused at that point that we were congratulated by another half marathon runner who had clocked Geth’s Manchester Marathon hoodie – apparently Manchester was on his bucket list because he was a Man Utd (or was it Man City?) supporter. Lots of Premier League fans in Canada!)
The crowds around the finish were still huge and it took a while to find Mum and Dad, but it was nice to catch up for a bit before they headed off for another day of Toronto adventures and we headed back to our hotel to recover. It would have been nice to grab a coffee nearby, but all the coffee shops were absolutely rammed post-race!
While I can’t say I ‘recommend’ this event exactly, it does have a great crowd vibe and a nice downhill course. Just be prepared for chaos from the start (we woke up on race morning to find the race website had crashed – thankfully I had already retrieved all the information I needed for the day!) and manage expectations accordingly.
I’ve taken a fortnight’s break from strict training (and will be running a 10k race this Sunday for a fun morning out and to see roughly where I am) but will be back on it from Monday for another eight weeks leading up to the next half marathon attempt!
Last Saturday was the second parkrunday of the Toronto trip!
In contrast to the previous week, it was beautifully sunny… but it was still very cold at that time in the morning so we jogged round in all our layers again 🥶 The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Budapest Park is an 8am start from May to September! The RD explained that part of the reason for this is to avoid the heat of the day, but that was certainly not applicable on this occasion. We even experienced flakes of snow as we were walking back to the streetcar! As it happened though, we were meeting family later that morning, so the earlier start worked out well for us.
This is a really pretty parkrun and also very flat. If I’m there again on a day with better temperature (and not running a race the next day!) I will consider giving it a good blast. This time, though, I just took it easy and enjoyed it.
Thanks to one of the regulars at the event who took this photo for us!
I’m back home again now so I’ll be a lot more local this weekend.
Last time I did a parkrun while visiting Toronto, in 2018, the nearest event was Whitby, which is a good hour or two away on the train. In 2019, the first parkrun started up in Toronto proper – Downsview parkrun – and I made plans to visit in 2020.
2020 was 2020, and for various reasons I’ve not been able to get back out to Canada until now. It’s been a long seven-year wait to visit Downsview! But we finally made it this last Saturday, and despite some awful weather, it was worth the wait.
The usual sign photo! Thanks to Ryan from the Downsview team for taking this for us.
It was a really cold, windy, rainy morning and the Downsview course is very exposed. It’s also about a mile to walk from the station to the start, so Geth and I were pretty frozen by the time we got there. As such, we made the decision to take it easy and run in all our layers. Despite this, it took me until the final lap (of three) to thaw out and feel like I could move my legs properly! I was quite surprised to finish in 28:16 as the cold made me feel so slow.
It was so much fun though because the team were so friendly and so were the other runners. As is often the case outside the UK, it was a small field (only 35 runners – there may well be a lot more on nicer days!) and everyone was having a laugh together.
This guy ran with an umbrella the whole way (a different umbrella to the one he’s holding here – maybe he brought options!). Photo from Downsview parkrun Facebook page.
I like to tick off different parkruns (and will be doing so again next week) but I may be tempted to revisit this one on a nicer day during a future visit.
Just sneaking in with last week’s parkrunday post before the next parkrunday arrives! It’s been a bit of a week 😴😵💫
It was another attempt at the Town Moor two-lapper – seventh in a row I believe. I was keen to knock more time off the season’s best and I did by about another 45 seconds (chased somebody round whom I know does about 25 usually in order to give myself a good chance of getting back under 26; came in at 25:26 in the end). I would love to get back down to my PB zone of 23:2x by late summer, so hopefully I’ll keep chipping away as I go through my various half marathon training blocks for 2026.
My friend Andy (marshalling) took a better picture than any of the official ones for the week!
Taper and tourism for a couple of weeks now, and then I’ll get back to it.
Flew into Toronto yesterday so the focus right now is on trying to stay awake. I hope to visit the Toronto phone box again once my brain is back in gear, but that will have to wait till next week!
Bit of a ramble today to update about what will be coming for future phone box posts!
I’m up to date with the phone box logging as it stands, but have quite a few boxes in my notes that for various reasons I wasn’t able to photograph. I have plans to ‘collect’ some of them later this year but for now I have logged everything (bar one or two photos for which I need to do a bit more research).
The long-promised phone box map – if you’ve been following for the last few months you’ll know that all phone box posts are now complete with coordinates, so they’re ready to go once I start working on this project! The question is when I’ll have time to do so, but I might be able to get a better sense of that during an upcoming writing retreat.
After a multi-year break I am back marathoning Doctor Who again, so there will be an eventual return to my sub-series of ‘The Wrong Phone Box’ posts. I also have one or two videogame phone box features in the planning.
