Vancouver Marathon!

The race is over, the live blogging didn't go as spectacular as planned, oh well, have to try again for Calgary 70.3 I guess...

Here is my pros and cons list:

Pros:

• Course: wonderful, the point to point all new course was pretty cool.  A great start running down hill with a perfect view of the mountains, downtown, and ocean.  Well marked, lots of good cheering, and great scenery.
• Atmosphere: solid
• Downtown Vancouver = awesome as always
• Weather: perfect, not too hot, not too cold

Cons:

• most water stations only had water, not gatorade.  That didn't bother me actually, but I could see it being annoying to some?
• transit was so busy as to be unusable on race morning, we took a cab in the end, but that worked fine.
• I didn't love the sack lunch, I prefer rice pudding and krispy kremes, like in Seattle so many years ago...

Here are some pictures of the trip (the two restaurant pictures are the pre race dinner at Antons and the post race dinner at the Boathouse (viewing the Cactus Club though).  Antons has massive servings of pasta and is probably the best pre race pasta dinner I can think of?

View From the SeaBus

Marathon Spirit in Vancouver

By Deep Cove

White Caps Game, Pretty Awesome

Post Race

View From the Boathouse (of Cactus Club) in English Bay

Anton's Pasta in Burnaby, Huge Portions!

View on the Flight Home

Live blogging the Vancouver marathon

We are checked into Vancouver now and the race atmosphere is fairly prevalent. There are tons of runners downtown and we saw some familiar faces from the gym on the train in from the airport.

A tip if you are taking the train is to buy your transit pass at the 7-11 in the basement at the airport. You avoid the airport charge and it is 5 bucks cheaper.

May Training

I'm not really following the official plan as much, with the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon coming up, but here is the link for the May training program:

http://www.speedtheory.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/Training-Program-May-2012.pdf

Maybe after the race I'll try to get back to it, it seems to have the key components I will be looking to get back to:

• 3 runs a week
• 3 bikes a week
• 3 swims a week
• 2 weight sessions

Hopefully I'll be able to fit in 11 workouts a week, might have to really pick up my game...

Vancouver prep

Home page updated with Vancouver weather widget, it really is almost go time, #racetime

Vancouver Marathon Time

The BMO Vancouver Marathon is almost here, game time is the coming Sunday.  We fly out Friday and fly back Monday, should be an exciting time.  I'll try to blog as much as possible from the expo/race/etc.

Here is Mike in a big workout on his birthday.