The best weekend of the year has come and gone once again! And once again, I’ve been walking around as though I fell asleep with a hanger in my mouth because I can’t stop smiling!

For the past two days, we’ve been participating in the Ottawa Race Weekend; one of the premiere running events in the country. For five years now, I’ve stood at various start lines for different races throughout the weekend and every time, I find myself overwhelmed with the excitement of the experience. I’m always so moved by the other runners around me and how determined they are to accomplish their goals. Even when I finished my own marathon, I still caught myself captured with everyone else’s stories.

This year was the first year that I didn’t actually run. Between the move and our trip, I just didn’t have a whole lot of time to train for a specific goal and I also thought that every runner, at some point in time, should be a spectator. We value the encouragement of spectators so much while we’re running and I figured that it was time for me to return the favour!!

An added excitement for this year was that Russell and his gorgeous girlfriend, Maureen, were coming to town from New Brunswick to run their own respective races. I hadn’t seen Russ in nearly ten years and the anticipation of seeing him again, in addition to the usual excitement, just made the wait for the weekend simply unbearable! But alas, it arrived and it didn’t disappoint!

Being a spectator, I sort of expected to come out of the weekend feeling a little bit sad that I hadn’t run at all but, much to my own surprise, I found encouraging other runners so fulfilling that I really wouldn’t have had it any other way. For four hours, Steve and I stood at Pretoria Bridge cheering on marathoners and half-marathoners. We watched them pass in huge masses as they initially found their way along the canal and then we watched them trickle in, slowly but surely, as they finished along the other side. We stayed well beyond the five hour mark, which meant that some runners needed more encouragement than others! Another spectator actually approached me and asked if I knew some of the runners or if I was just an “enthusiastic citizen”?!?! I answered him by saying that I just knew how hard this part of the race could be. I’ve been there and done that…more than once! Kilometer 40/19 simply has no prejudices and will take down anyone it can!

One “less inspiring” thing that I always experience during the race weekend though is a pet peeve that I have among other runners; the willingness to use the term “marathon” interchangeably to describe any distance run over the course of the weekend. I don’t say this to undermine the significance of all other races because running any distance is an accomplishment but, only one distance is truly the marathon! And for anyone who has endured running that distance, they know that it requires an unbelievable amount of determination to earn the right to say that you’ve run it. I can’t tell you how many times I heard people say that they ran the marathon when really, they ran the 10km race (yes, incredible…no, not the marathon! Let’s be clear about this!). I’ve read before that less than 1% of the population has ever finished a marathon…so with that being said, other runners should have the decency not to take that away from them!

Misuse of terminology aside though…everyone was amazing! They hung in there, they smiled, they lavished in the gorgeous weather and they realized that respect had just been earned. Russ finished with a terrific time, Maureen completed her first half-marathon, Jesper uttered the words “pace bunny” on his way by and everyone really showed the course who’s boss! There are, of course, the elite runners as well, which are just incredible to watch. They never cease to blow my mind with their gift of running. I always see them fly by and find myself saying “uh…so that’s what 90 pounds of Kenyan looks like! It’s a good thing I didn’t blink or I might have missed them”!!!

Don’t get me wrong though…one sight of the ten kilometer race sent my heart racing as well and I couldn’t wait to get back in my running shoes. If there are ever times when I question why I started the madness of running in the first place, I question no more when this weekend comes. The inspiration of 30,000 runners of all shapes and sizes leaves me wide-eyed (usually crying) and aching to be on the run again.

Running rocks my world!