Run run as fast as you can. You can't catch me I'm.....

...well turns out I'm not the gingerbread man AND you can catch me if you need too. BUT....

WE DID IT! Our very first half marathon is officially under our belts. We came. we ran. we did it!

Moranda, Angela and I headed over to Victoria on the ferry last Saturday morning. We got there nice and early thinking we'd have at least a 2 ferry wait. (any of you who follows the BC news knows we have some serious trouble with our ferry s. They're expensive and break down a lot.) But we, surprisingly got on the 9:00. HURRAY!

Yikes. How pasty white am I?!
This was our girls weekend with a twist. The twist? It involved running 21 km with 5000 other crazy people. We'd run 20km the weekend before so I knew we could do the distance. It was just the actual race and the time that were in question. Would I make it in the 2 hours we hoped? Would I hit a wall? What if we had to pee? Or worse? (seriously, for a runner this is a big deal. All the bathroom related issues. And were were NOT stopping to go potty!)

After picking up our run packages and hitting the line up for free Gatorade I was hit with realization, "Crap! We're really doing this thing!"

Here we are checking into the hotel with our good friend the hotel bear. What? Weird!

We spent a wonderful day, wandering the crowded streets of Victoria crammed with thousands of other racers and their families. It was pretty cool to think that all these people of different races, shapes and sizes were here to declare their love of the long run, or to prove to themselves they could do it, or to support someone who just loves to torture themselves in this particular approved method of self flagellation :) We shopped and ate and talked for hours. The only thing missing was a glass of wine at dinner as we gazed out at the harbor and tried to eat our pre-race carbs.


So here's where I stop and rant a bit about my running bff, Angela. She hardly trains. I mean the girl runs but not regularly like Moranda and I do. At dinner before the race, she had two beers and meat loaf. Seriously, MEAT LOAF! I'm not kidding you. The morning of, she had a coffee and maybe some water? Took one bottle of juice with her AND beat the pants off me! SO ANNOYING! Really though we are proud. I mean, how could we not be?

Look at her, putting on her iPod, not even pretending she going to run with us!

Moranda, tiny little thing that she is...sets a mean pace...

....and me. I'm the cheer leader. I get the troupes out, sign them up and brow beat them into running with me in bad weather and then....well they all beat my time! What?! Actually I'm pretty proud of them all! Woot woot!
Here I am, having my pre-race pbj. YUM!


We crowed into the street a block from our hotel and waited for the race to start. My thoughts at the time? "Oh no, I have to pee. There's no way I'm going to stop to pee. We're really doing this. YIKES!"

And we were off.

The course wound it's way through the harbor area of Victoria and then out towards the ocean. It's all kind of hazy for me but we seemed to run up hills and down hills loop around and then up more gradual hills, into neighbourhoods and up more hills. I kept expecting to loop back and run back along the ocean but we kept turning corners and running up hills. The first 15 kms went really well. I actually found the first 12 pretty easy. We had a fast (for us) pace going on but we seemed to be okay. Moranda and I ran together for most of it and she was just on a mission.
I ran into trouble running back along the ocean at about 16 km. I had to walk to take a gel pack and Moranda couldn't stop. I tried to catch her the rest of 5 km and I could even see her but couldn't quite make my time up again.
Those last 5km were so tough! I had no idea what a mental game the whole thing would be. I was giving myself serious mental slaps upside the head. Everything in me wanted to stop or just to walk. It was so crazy! When we got nearer the end people standing on the side cheering would say, "you're almost there. Only one km!" And then you'd run for a km and someone would say, "only one km!" They were playing some seriously mean mind games! Those last 2.5 k were the longest I've ever run! When I first finished I was pretty disappointed in my time but looking back....not bad at all!



Angela : 1:57:42
Moranda : 2:02:50
Shalagh : 2:04:42

Look how proud weird hotel bear is of us!


We were pretty elated and quite emotional. While were were running all of us were wondering, "why are we doing this exactly?"

After, we still couldn't tell you why, but there's something about training, running, struggling and finishing....


So we signed up for another one. In February. Anyone want to join us?