The Bluenose 5K 2009

I took part in the Bluenose 5K walk/run earlier today for the second straight year. The 5 K is one of several races run on the Bluenose Marathon weekend. The 5k was actually called the "Ben's Smart Walk/run" after the title sponsor Ben's Bakery and their Smart bread.

The day was cool, cloudy, drizzly/misty, and a little windy - apparently almost perfect race conditions (there is a long tradition of the Bluenose race day having terrible weather). Things got started at the Metro Centre where race bibs and t-shirts were picked up.

Interesting start – the Metro Centre was a ZOO! They need to do a better job of organizing – I checked in and they did not have my size t-shirt (despite registering in January), so I ened up with a men's large which may cover one arm (I usually wear XXXL t-shirts). What happened apparently is that people asked for sizes bigger than they registered for and they were all out of XL and XXL (what I had asked for as it was the biggest size they had made).

There was also little evidence of Bluenose hospitality – two women swore at me when they ran into ME!! What’s that all about? I did notice a significant improvement in attitude after the race, so I will attribute the lack of friendliness to “race face” :-). It was a sea of humanity, verging on a mob :-)...

The weather was perfect once we got started– cool, cloudy, a little breezy, and misty – I was cool all the way (but still SWEATY!!!). Did not see a single person from NSCC, but did run into others I knew including John O'Donnell. John was my padre when I was commanding officer of 33 (Halifax) Service Battalion. For the last several years he has been one of the driving forces behind L'Arche here in Halifax. They just opened their Halifax home after many years of hard work.

I twittered my progress on the walk/run (I mostly walked) - it was so cool tweeting the whole thing (you can follow it using the hash tag #bn5K or checking out my Twitter stream)– hopefully I didn’t go overboard – I think I am truly a twitterholic now – the sense of immediacy and community that you get with Twitter is just too cool. I actually felt like I was being supported by people coming along with me. I also posted some pictures at Flickr.

I felt great after the walk and am already thinking of next year - perhaps the 5K run? Hmmm...

Update: Even with all of the Twittering and conversations along the way, I finished the 5K walk/run in 54:15, almost 4 minutes faster than last year - the 1008th finisher. Next year I'm gunning for the top 1000...