By: Matt Setlack
While I was in Bulgaria, I came across a 10k race online where the 1st place finisher (both male and female) won an all expenses paid trip including airfare, accommodations and spending money to a Global Energy Race anywhere in the world. I immediately signed up.
On Sat 24 Sep, I drove 600km from Cold Lake to Calgary (1,200km round trip, 12 hours driving) and made sure that I arrived at Strides Running Store before 4 pm to pick up my number because I know based on previous experience (i.e. 2015 Edmonton 10k) that it is important to pick up your race number the day before the race. On the morning of the race, I made sure that I was parked at the event site 2 hours in advance of the start and at the start line 5 minutes before the start (10:15am).
I felt very fit standing at the start line as I had just came back from the World Mountain Running Championships in Bulgaria. During the two week Bulgaria trip I had also covered over 8,000m (26,240 ft) of vertical elevation gain and was ready to rock and roll. I showed up at the start line at 10:10am but there were only about 40 people at the start line (nobody was toeing the line and there were still 3k finishers coming across the finish line) so I asked a couple of nearby runners:
"Where is everyone? I thought the race was supposed to start at 10:15am", I asked.
The runners replied, "they just made an announcement and the race will now be starting at 10:30am because they are running behind schedule."
Not wanting to stand around at the start line for 20 minutes, I decided to quickly use the washroom. While I was in the washroom I heard "5, 4, 3, 2, 1...." and immediately thought, "that's odd, the 10k race is not supposed to be starting for another 15 mins". In any case, I quickly exited the washroom only to find the start area deserted. One of my initial thoughts was that those two runners I talked to must have been working for Jeremy Deere. I thought that maybe they wanted to give him an advantage.
In any case, I quickly ran back to the start line (the opposite direction to the race course), around the marshalling corrals and then across the timing mat. It was a little disheartening to be starting behind even before my race had started, to say the least. This little mishap cost me 32 seconds. By the time I wound my way through the masses, I could see someone in a white shirt who I thought was the race leader about 200-300m ahead of me (in retrospect, it turned out this person was actually in second place).
I eventually caught Geoff Hopfner (2nd place) around the 6k point. I couldn't catch Jeremy on that day though and according to chip time, he ran his race 6 seconds faster than I ran my race. I am still a bit in disbelief that this actually happened. I ended up taking home a $20 gift card to Walmart and a bag of Dempster's bagels so not all was lost. Regardless of how I placed, I am extremely impressed with how well the Calgary Global Energy Race was organized. I would definitely race it again and make sure that I don't leave the start line under any circumstances!
Don't believe everything you hear!