The SunRype Okanagan Marathon is a super fun race and one that we have had a blast racing. The course is flat and scenic. The volunteers are wonderful, and there are tons of goodies after the race for runners. This is a race we’re definitely doing on the regular.
The race started at 8:10am so we had a pretty laid back morning getting up and going. I’m trying to do way more carboloading before my races now, so I was able to hit almost 550g of carbs the day before the race. I woke up feeling too full for breakfast, so we just had oat milk lattes and I ate 2 wine gums.
It was easy finding parking, however, the lines at the portapotties were super long so we ended up starting the race 2 minutes late, and I made a decision to try and catch up to my desired pacers.
My GPS wasn’t turned for the first 5km because I had been fussing with settings the night before and never finished doing what I was doing, so ran by HR for that first bit.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have done that because my heart rate got too high too early into the race. I finally turned on the GPS after 5km and then switched to running by pace, with my 8min run 30-second walks. My legs felt so awesome throughout. I cannot remember the last time I felt so strong.
My stomach felt really full throughout. I got most of 1 gel in near the beginning of the race, and then just had water throughout. I almost barfed once around the 12km mark so just dialed exertion back a bit for the rest of the race. There are a couple of lollipops on the course, where the course runs back on itself, so I was hoping to be able to sight Justin but wasn’t able to. I was able to spot my friend Jeannine as she was running the 10k.
Felt like I could’ve run faster if my stomach didn’t feel so full the entire time, but overall a good day! I will skip the oat milk with my coffee next time. I focused on my form a lot through the race. And maybe I could’ve breathed more deeply throughout.
The temperature was 3C at the race start, so I wore crops, a tshirt, long sleeve, vest, hydration vest, hat, gloves. Switched to buff to cover ears and took off vest and gloves during the race.
The post-race for runners was great. There were bananas, pastries, cookies, chips, juice, as well as hot coffee and hot chocolate. I couldn’t get over how wonderful it was to enjoy those hot drinks inside merchandise/gear pickup tents. Since it was also the 25th anniversary of this race, they had this super cute display of mini cupcakes.
We really enjoyed running this race, and we look forward to next year. The race bling might be hard to beat because the 2019 medal is so cool, it spins and it’s glittery!
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