Not a PR, but close

20:11 in the Toronto Marathon 5k this morning. The good part of today's race, it felt manageable throughout. I had a couple of 65 mile weeks this month, which helped with the endurance. A good set of hard hills midweek carried me over. I've never quite gotten the hang of a 5k 'taper', meaning how to spend the day before. Yesterday was completely off for various reasons and I opted the just save the legs for a day. I still end up with 40ish miles for the week so that's about as much of a taper as I'll give a race. I'll probably do the Hamilton half on Nov 2nd, no tapering for that one, I'll just switch the Saturday tempo for easy.

The Toronto Marathon seems like such a cheapskate event to me. There was more than 2000 finishers in the 5k, about 4600 in the half and another couple of thousand in the full. Yet race management gives stingey prizes and a/g awards are minimal depth. They offer Pierre Laurent watches for the top 3 in the full (probably nice watches, but they're not money) and budget $3500 total for masters top 3. Prizes in the half weren't determined by race day, probably gift certificates or maybe memberships to Goodlife? Whoopee! For the 5k, this year you get a lovely...finishers medal. A finishers medal for a 5k? Actually, probably more than I believe happily accept it. I took mine but stuffed it in my pocket rather than wear it. Maybe I'm just peeved for taking 3rd in my a/g in the 5k and getting nothing for it. If I'd taken first, I'd be given the luxury of running it again next year for free.

I know races are pricey to put on, but surely they can offer a little depth in these mega events. The Nightcrawler 5 miler isn't a huge race by any standard (less than 1000) but they give out nice prizing and lots of merchandise and this really makes the race. It also draws considerable talent. I mean, I do 20ish in this big event and it nets me 28th place of 2000 overall, which shows that all the real runners stayed home. Actually the real ones ran the zoo run on Saturday.