Training for the Victoria Half Marathon

Jean-Louis and I are both racing in the Victoria Half Marathon this coming weekend. That's in 5 days!!! This will be our first race in over 3 years. Basically since I was pregnant with Tristan. I'm both nervous and excited.

The Victoria Half Marathon always occurs during Thanksgiving long weekend, which is one more reason for us to ferry over to Victoria and spend time with the family. At the same time, it's my mom's birthday too! Good thing it's a long weekend :)

We've ran the Victoria Half Marathon twice already back in 2005 and 2006. It's a beautiful scenic route and I would recommend this race based on just that fact. It turns out that the race also hands out excellent long sleeve New Balance technical shirts to participants, rather than your typical running white t-shirts. Another plus. Being staged in October means that we get the nice summer weather to train for it. Another plus! We've ran the Vancouver Half Marathon once and it just pales in comparison. I mean the route is also very lovely and the biggest bonus is that it's in town so we don't have to travel to get to it. But it's in May and training needs to start in the winter and that means running in the cold and rain :( But it's also the little things. The Victoria race has better snacks and food for after the race since they are sponsored by Thrifty Foods. Overall it seems you get more and it's $5 cheaper than the Vancouver half marathon. Man, I suddenly feel like a promoter for the Victoria Half Marathon :) But honestly, if you are a half marathon runner, you should run the race in Victoria. It's totally awesome and it's my hometown! :)

Are we ready for our race? We are as ready as we can ever be, being parents of a 2.5 year old toddler. Poor Tristan has to sit in the jogging stroller for one hour at a time when we go running together now. He's been doing pretty well. We try to time it during is naps but he barely naps anymore. We run with him in the stroller only twice a week. Jean-Louis and I run together while Tristan is in daycare twice a week. We basically run once Jean-Louis gets home from work and then we run straight to daycare to pick Tristan up. The daycare staff is used to seeing us both all sweaty and gross :) If we're not prepared now, it's hopeless. This week we're taking it a bit easy. We have two more runs left to do before race day. One 10KM and one 5KM and that's it! Running these short distances is probably not the best way to train for the race but we just don't have time to be running a half-marathon in the day. I already feel bad that Tristan is stuck in the stroller for one hour.

5 days left! Sunday around 9:30AM, I'm going to be one happy sore runner :)