Morning mishaps

Did I mention that I am not a morning person? Today, most of the people in the running group ran the Lands End Half Marathon race. (Congratulations to everyone who ran!). I opted out and decided to run 20km at my marathon pace - 5:38 per km (aiming for sub 4 hour marathon). I mapped a really nice route through Oak Bay and Dallas Rd, running through some of the marathon course. Well, you can guess what happens when someone who is directionally challenged writes down a route before she has had her morning coffee...

The wrong turn was at Moss St. For some reason, I had written down a right turn when I should have turned left. (Distinguishing between right and left can be hard at 6am). I had a hunch that I was going the wrong direction, but didn't start heading back until I hit Fort St. At that point, I had to run through Cook St. Village and back towards Dallas Rd. It really wasn't that bad - I stopped at where I thought was 20km - except that I had to walk 30 minutes back to my house. I just calculated the distance and turns out I ran 21.3km - just a little over the distance for a half marathon. And my pace was 5:21! Felt good to know that I was on track.

This is not the first time I've taken wrong turns. The most memorable was when I ran the Run for MS in Vancouver. I had planned to run 12km - I hadn't run more than 11km at that point. I missed the turn and ended up running the 20km route!! I was hobbling for a good week. Another good one was when I mapped out a 15 MILE route instead of 15 km! The most recent debacle was when with my running partner, John, in the hilly part of Queenswood. We ended up running a couple of extra k's and adding a couple of big hills to an already tough route. Now he is always in charge of holding the map!

No wonder orienteering was my least favourite part of PE class...