Cheering on a half-marathon hero - Valencia 2018 IAAF Would Championships

My training usually includes periodic long runs. In fact, usually I run a half-marathon distance once a month. (21.1km)

This month, I wanted to dedicate that long run to a Canadian champion, Emily Setlack, who is currently in Valencia preparing for a run at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships on the March 24th 2018.

If better equipped, I might simply have run her distance and speed, to show my appreciation. There is a long list of why that wasn't happening, so to show her I was cheering for her, I did a tiny hint of what she might do.

Early in my run, on a popular strava segment across Frame Lake, I tried but failed to get a PR (you know - because SHE would have tried). I set that record without long johns, so it wasn't for lack of trying. It's just tougher to get your legs to turnover in woollies.

photo of the segment showing the approach into downtown

Once I got through downtown to Great Slave Lake, I started across the Dettah Ice Road, and wrote 'Go Emily' in the nice, wide road.

Not the neatest writing, I'll admit, but most of my handwriting experience did not include sub-zero temperatures, Sunday traffic and was a good deal smaller. :)

I continued across the bay toward Dettah, until I had enough distance, and started home.

To get some idea of just how hard Ms Setlack will be working during that race, I'll do some comparing. Join me if you like. My fastest kilometer tonight was just over 5 minutes, and my overall time was 2:25:36

For an estimate, I'll try to figure out how many beer-miles could be run between her finish time and mine. She ran about 1:14:00 in the US within the last year or so, which gives 71 minutes, or roughly 4,260 seconds.

The current beer mile record (held by another Canadian, Corey Bellamore) is at 4:33 or 273 seconds.

That means a replay of Mr. Bellamore setting the beer mile world record could be played 15 and a half times.

If you are unfamiliar with the beer mile, it is a time trial where the athlete runs 4 laps of a standard 400m track, drinking a standard beer between each.

You can follow Ms. Setlack on Instagram, where she shares a lot of great training inspiration.

Go Emily!!!