2 down - 10 to go

2 down - 10 to go!
The second official event is now history! I'm very happy to have PB'd on the first one in May, because now I don't need to worry about my times :)
Saturday, June 4th was the inaugural Whistler Half Marathon and what a day it was. Our horrible Spring disappeared for a while leaving us with an absolutely glorious day, sunshine all the way.
Friday was a busy pre-race day, accompanied Michael's class on their big grade 5 field trip to Victoria, MP and I opted out of the parliament building tour in order to catch the 5:00 ferry to Tsawwassen and then make the trek to Whistler. Dave had gone up earlier in the afternoon so he could pick up our race packages. It was a beautiful drive with a total of 4 bears spotted on route.
Saturday morning came awfully early but the sun was out and there was a good crowd of Alma runners at the start line:

I had taken what I thought was a pretty good look at the route for the race but apparently I didn't look close enough, while I though we headed out to Rainbow park on the first part of the race we actually headed up Blueberry Hill. Blueberry is far too unassuming a name for that hill, it went on and on and on. I knew the Valley trail alongside the golf course was hilly but the road was even worse, thank goodness for the down hill stretch that followed. From the summit of Blueberry Hill we sailed down to Wayside park, good directing Jacquie, then some more up as we looped around and came back to Blueberry Hill this time to take the golf course route down. Now we headed off to Rainbow Park and the turn around point, another loop around a residential area then back to the golf course to run alongside the front nine. Along the way we saw lots of evidence of bears, the poop exhibit at the museum in Victoria on Friday proved useful to identify the piles o'poop at the side of the trail. Luckily we didn't see any of the poop depositors, although it sounds like some of the later runners and walkers did encounter at least one bear on the trail. From the golf course we crossed under the highway, took a jaunt through the Village, past the cheering throngs (Newton), and off to the Upper Village (at least I think that's where we went), a few more dipsy doodles and it was back to the Olympic plaza and the finish line.

It truly was a spectacular course and a spectacular day. Many thanks to Nicole for sticking with me through a not very energetic run, I really appreciated the company. Congratulations to those that managed to achieve PB's on a very challenging course; I know for sure that Dave and Christine did, and congrats to all the Alma runners that finished: Andy, Liz, Sebastien, Emma, Nicole, Bob, Phil, Anna, Lina, Susan, Andrew, Tony, and any one else that I may have missed :)
The course organization was wonderful, the volunteers were great and the spectators who came out along the route were fantastic, there was incredible community support for this inaugural race. The only thing missing was a medal for finishing, although the original print is lovely I'm not sure how I'll display it with my 11 other medals :)

The afternoon was spent scouring the Village for the best calamari in town (Carumba wins) and the sickest backpack we could find for Michael.

Then it was the Garibaldi Lift Company in time for the big game - Go Canucks Go!

What a goal Burrows, now that's the way to end an overtime period!

All in all a wonderful weekend!
Next up.....get some work done on that darn degree, get back into a good running routine, I have learned that I cannot run a good half marathon on one run a week, and prepare for the next event - Fueled by Fine Wine in Dundee, Oregon, anyone care to join us??????