Chilly Half Marathon 2011

If you woke up on race morning for the Chilly Half and groaned, imagine how the organizers felt! While it looked like a winter wonderland from the comfort of my kitchen, coffee in hand, it was not a walking wonderland on the roads.

The first challenge was getting to the race. The highways were snow and ice covered. As I carefully made my way along the rutted QEW, I was grateful that the other cars and trucks were behaving sensibly. Once I arrived at the race site, it made no sense to go up and down the roads warming up as I knew it would just be another hour with cold, wet feet.

Walkers were supposed to have a separate start after the runners. A few blue walking bibbed participants had to be pulled out from among the runners. Ultimately, we were set off rather unceremoniously while runners were still crossing the start line. This made it impossible to see if walkers were running.

While the start was somewhat frustrating, the organizers had a cyclist on the route who was monitoring the blue bibs to ensure they were walking. A few people were transferred to the running division. This attention to the walking division did make for much happier walking division participants!

HUGE kudos to the enthusiastic volunteers on the course - especially the WoW Power Walking water station gang at 18k. it can't have been easy to stand in that slush and ice for more than 4 hours - looking and acting so enthusiastic.