Usually the Victoria Marathon is one of my favourite events of the running year. It must be since I’ve done it 12 times. Thats more than any other marathon I’ve participated in. As I’ve told many people it is my favourite Canadian city marathon. Its a well organized event on a course that is fairly fast, and the weather is usually really good at that time of year. It is also an opportunity to spend some time with family since all our boys live in the Victoria area so we get to do Canadian Thanksgiving together. I’m going back again this year, but with very different perspective. Instead of this being the usual big highlight for me, this year I am looking at it as my last full marathon race before Everest Marathon. It will be the end of that phase of my training.
I’ve been training pretty hard this summer for Everest, as well as doing my best to raise funds for Nepal School Projects. During August and September I was running a marathon every two weeks. The last one in Bellingham was pretty challenging and my body is really tired. So I am looking forward to Victoria because I will be backing off my training after this Sunday. I will continue to try to do lots of hill runs until we leave for India at the end of the month, but no more racing until Everest. Will almost seem like a holiday to not have a marathon scheduled for 8 weeks.
Funny how perspective can change. When I have a real challenge like Everest ahead suddenly just running 42.1 km. at sea level doesn’t seem like that big a deal. I’ll report on how Victoria goes next week, but from that point on it will mostly be my fund raising efforts that I will be concentrating on.
Running for Nepal 