It was that wonderful time of year that Denise and I left all the boys at home and headed up to Vancouver BC to participate in the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon. Typically we don’t train and end up running most of it and can’t move for about a week following. This year was no exception on the no training portion, but my knee surgery prevented me from running most of it. But we will get to that soon…
There is a lot of tradition in this weekend. We usually head up on Saturday and stay through Monday to miss the traffic and crowds. We stay at the same hotel, we tend to go to the same restaurants, we always get a massage and pedicure and this year we even were in the exact same room at our hotel as last year. I didn’t even need to connect my phone or laptop to the internet – they both automatically detected and signed in with the same password as last year.
We got up at the crack of ungodly-no-one-should-be-awake hour of the morning so that we could catch our train to the start of the race. Both of us choked down the coffee that was provided in the hotel room because Canadian coffee shops don’t open until 8am on Sundays. WHAT SORT OF COUNTRY DOES THAT??? Anyway, we get to the race start just in time, run about a half mile and then start walking because we were heading downhill (ouch on that pounding).
All the sudden Denise grabs my arm: “There is a Starbucks right there.” Me: “Is there a line?” Denise: “No.” Me: “Are we really doing this?” Denise: “Let’s GO!” So we detoured less than a mile into the race to grab a cup of coffee as fast as we could and then hopped back onto the course, walking as quickly as we could. Another quarter mile later, I look back up the hill where there are only a small handful of people behind us, “Uhhhhh…. those blue trucks up there – those are the sweeper trucks!!! We need to get a move on or we will get swept out of the race for being too slow!” We picked up the pace and then when we finished our cup of coffee, we started running a third of a mile, then walking two thirds of a mile for the rest of the race. We passed a ton of people, moving our finishing time up to 3:15, which was much better than I thought it would be. At about mile ten I started to really hurt, but when you are that close to the end, you have to finish!
We finished the day out with sitting in the hot tub, hobbling to our massage and pedicure appointment, then being able to walk back and out to dinner before heading home the next day. All in all it was a fun weekend! Here are some photos – it is a mixture of my phone camera and my big camera. Denise did NOT like to have her photo taken, so I appreciate how she tolerated me (especially cause she totally looks like a model in a fashion shoot in a few of them!). Some of the phone photos were terrible quality, but I love the moments they show.
And now only 364 more days until we get to go again…
