Up to the End of July

Well I’m back from my west coast adventure about a week now am thinking the training is going well, but who knows. I guess we’ll find out at the half marathon in Edmonton on the 22^nd of August. Running while on vacation is always a challenge as you’re either trying to do it before everyone gets up or are trying to fit it in around when babies take their naps. This year I have not been one for getting up uber early to run, so I get out when Patrick goes down for a nap. Unfortunately this also coincides with the hottest part of the day, most days I was able to get at least an hour of good running until my body decided that it had enough of the good life and started to reject what I had been using for fuel, the heat didn’t help much either. There was a couple of days where I just either fell apart during the run and always out in the middle of nowhere, worst case was on Salt Spring Island where I just ran out of fuel 8K or so from the house, for that 8K there was nowhere to get a drink nor did I see anyone other than two cyclists pass me in the time it took me to walk back to the house. The other time was in Port Hardy, when I was only 20 minutes out into a run and the body decided that it had had enough, so you’re thinking it was only 20 minutes back to the house? Well that turned out to be closer to 40 minutes and it was the most uncomfortable 40 minutes I’ve ever had in years, I think since I gave up on most dairy products especially milk. I don’t want to get into too much graphic detail but let’s just say “running” is not only something the legs are able to do.

The vacation itself was one of the best that I’d been on since moving to Canada. I also think it is one of the first that we’ve gone on vacation that I didn’t have a race somewhere in the schedule. I love going to Vancouver, it’s such a beautiful city to run in, there is so much to see and do, part of that attraction is running on the water front around English Bay and Stanley Park.

We also went to Salt Spring  Island as a trip to the coast wouldn’t be the same without going to the Island and  then up to Port Hardy up in the north of Vancouver Island, in my opinion they are two of the most beautiful places to visit. Salt Spring reminds me of Wicklow and the hills around Dublin, while Port Hardy is one of those places that is a little bit more.....what you think the coast of BC looks like when you think of the Pacific coast line, it also reminded me of a couple of places that I stayed in while in Australia (except the trees were not pine trees down under). There was a lot Eagles in the trees along the beach, we even saw a whale in the bay all from the comfort of the couch with a coffee in hand. Life doesn't get much better than that. Unfortunately like every vacation it had to come to an end as we had to come back to Edmonton.