Victoria half marathon was a success!

We did it! We were blessed with great weather and had a terrific run. In fact, Jean-Louis finished with a personal best time! We both achieved our target goal of under 2 hours. Not too shabby for our first race in over 3 years :)

Here are our results:

	Time	Final Place	Place in Sex	Place in Age Division
Jean-Louis	1:39:10	533/5147	401/1916	65/245
Susan	1:47:29	1009/5147	326/3231	59/439

Jean-Louis and I ran together for the first kilometer or so and then we lost each other in the crowd. In the end he just smoked me, as my brother-in-law puts it! I had a feeling he would do well since he was in much better shape than I was and trained twice as much as I did. We used to be great pace buddies. A long time ago, that is. It's hard to think that I used to beat him in some of the longer races in the past. Not that I'm bummed by my own results. I more than reached my goal so I'm proud :)

After the race, we ate oranges, bananas, chocolate energy drinks, bagels, and cookies. There were also puddings, energy bars, and muffins. My favorite were the oranges. I couldn't get enough of those sweet oranges! Thank-you Thrifty Foods for breakfast :)

The Victoria marathon event, which also includes the half marathon, 8km road race, wheelchair competitions, and  kids run has been voted the best marathon in Western Canada. It is always well organized and we pretty much get everything we want out of a race. We have competed in maybe twenty races since 2002 and this race is one of our most highly rated ones! I get the feeling that the competitors in this race are overall faster compared to other races. Or maybe I'm just getting old :) Hey, next year I will be in a new age division! Wow.

I ran too slow, then too fast, then super slow, then held steady to the end. I actually sprinted the last 500 meters. It was bad strategy on my part so if I were to race again soon, I know I could do better. It has been so long that I must have forgotten what it was like to race again. Overall, Jean-Louis and I both feel good about the half-marathon. It really wasn't so bad. After the race, Jean-Louis mentioned that the race was actually quite short. Brag, brag, brag. Not for me! The guy even tweeted while he ran! Obviously it was too easy for Jean-Louis :) Now that the half marathon is behind us, the full marathon seems a lot more reachable. The main problem is finding the time to train with Tristan and also finding someone to watch Tristan.

My parents babysat Tristan for the first time ever this weekend so we could both race. We were a bit stressed about it, especially since we left him early in the morning while he was still sleeping. In the end, he was perfectly fine. It was a couple of hours without us and it was just fine for everyone. I think it helped that I had told him about it for awhile now. He knew that we were running and that he would have to stay with his gong and ma. We planned for them to watch us along the route but unfortunately we totally missed each other :( Thankfully none of us got lost this year and we were able to meet up after wards. We even made Tristan a sign to hold while cheering us on! My parents said he was saying hi to everyone that ran by and they said hi back to him :) Oh well. Maybe we can use the sign again next year :)