A Good Idea???

As previously mentioned, this Sunday was the date of the annual Vancouver SUN Run. Which is now the largest 10K in North America. For yesterday's race over 59,000 people were registered. Needless to say, this is not a race where you are going to PR. It is much more of a fun run and many people use it each year as a way of kickstarting their New Year's resolutions. I participated in 2007 and since my work was registering a group (141 people) decided to join them, but I needed to make this a bit of a challenge, so instead of just completing the 10K I decided to run to the Skytrain(subway type of idea) which was 11.6K, then run the race as a race, and then to run home from the Skytrain. To make this day a lot more fun I enlisted Ward to come along for the ride.

So on to the report. The day started at 6:30am at Ward's house and we decided we would take the run there nice and easy, no heart rate over 150bpm. This section was pretty uneventful. Minus the porcupine, which ended up being just a small basketball that came rolling down the street towards us.

Ward with the Porcupine


Then we were on to the race, we took the train down and got to the race about 10 minutes before start. Just enough time to put our bags in gear check and get into our corral. Oops I mean the corral for the 50 to 60 minute group. We were supposed to be in the 40 to 50 minute group, but entered on the wrong side of the fence no worries though. The race was a good one, ran with Ward until the 7KM mark when he took off and I ended up finishing in 48 minutes. Not bad for weaving in and out of about 10,000 people and having already ran 12K on the way in. The amount of weaving was fairly signifigant, as when I uploaded my Garmin it read the distance as 10.25KM. Now came the fun part. We ended up waiting in Gear Check for an hour, 20 minutes of which was spent by Ward trying to find his backpack, which had gone missing from our Gear Check bag. But it was finally found.

The post race expo was a zoo by this time, with about 30,000 people now finished, so we stopped at a grocery store for some grub and took the scenic route back to the Skytrain. 45 minutes later we were at the end, and it was time to start running again. My body did not like this idea and I was feeling quite stiff. Ended up having to take quite a few walk breaks, but as it was a beautiful day it was great to enjoy. Run home for 12Km took 1hr 29 min. About 13 minutes longer than on the way there, so really not too bad.

By the end of the run I was feeling beat, and the rest of the day was spent relaxing and recovering. The plan was to get in a 4.5hr Brick workout on Monday, but as soon as I got up on Monday I realized this wasn't going to happen and ended up lounging till the afternoon. At that point I decided to take the Green Flying Machine out for it's maiden voyage. All I can say is Wow!!! That bike is fast, comfortable, oh yeah and did I mention? FAST!!! Even on tired sore legs I was flying, can't wait to get it out and put some real effort in.

Here are some more photo's from Sunday.





Also, on Monday, since I was not completing any workouts I decided to do some work in my garage. I have recently installed an all important shoe rack, purchased a rack for hanging some of my bikes, and installed a nice gym styled floor and purchased some dumbbells. Here are a few picks of my hard work.





And I'll leave with one last photo. Me wearing the beer goggles.