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Canada Eh? Yaaaaaaaaaa... A group of 11 of
us ventured up to Canada to run the 30th Vancouver Marathon
on May 6th. and we had a whale of a time. Great weather, good
food, fun company, scenic places and too much drinking and
dancing made for a wonderful trip.
The marathon itself was very hilly but the perfect running
weather made for a great run. In fact all of the women on
the trip set a personal PR!! Congrats to Kathryn, Josolyn,
Delia, Mari and Merry. The men? Well, uhhhh, ahhhh yes! We
set an international PR. It was a bit difficult to judge your
pace since it was measured in kilometers but, thanks to Amir
who made wrist bands converting miles into kilometers, we
managed. Even though the course was scenic and the weather
was great (40-60) the hill in Stanley park surprised the guys
(okay, were whimps) and the water stops were not exactly spread
out evenly. They were suppose to be 2 miles apart but sometimes
they were one mile apart and then sometimes it seemed like
4. But all N all I'd recommend doing this to anyone.
Vancouver was a great city to be in. A very cosmopolitan
type city, it is the 2nd highest movie filming business. It
was Austin meets New York type feeling. We heard of all the
rain the area receives but the only rain we encountered was
when we drove up from Seattle to Vancouver. Great weather
otherwise. And restaurants! Ray's Boathouse in Seattle, Silvio's,
Breakfast at Two Parrots, Coffee at Blenz, Saturday dinner
at Spaghetti Factory and most of all...all you can eat Sushi
at Tampopo's. MMMMM ! It must have cost us about $10 each
just for the sushi and I think our bill for the 10 of us would
have been way over $500. Even people who never ate sushi were
chowing down big time.
This is the 2nd time we did a group trip for an out of state
marathon. And so many parallells. In San Diego we had transportation
issues with American West, relaxed at LaJolla & Pacific
Beach. In Vancouver, we had transportation issues with Budget-Rent-A-Crap,
relaxed at Bouchard Gardens (worth the visit) and had snowball
fights on Grouse Mountain. Can you imagine guys like Vic and
Sid going gaga over flowers? It happend! And the BusRide was
our "let your hair down" memory. All I can say about
that is Oban's is very good to us and Amir is a party animal!
All clean fun actually, but I think some of the Canooks may
have wanted to kick us of the bus.
So to end, thanks to my travel companions, Vic, Mari, Sid,
Delia, Amir, Josolyn, Mark, Kathryn, Merry and Kathryn's friend
who did the half marathon. It took a group effort to make
this happen....and it happened very well.
Pat Burch
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