Monday Musings - Weekend Recap

• Volunteering is fun!  I got to do bag check for a local half marathon.  When I got there at 6:30am there were already a couple of bags.  Apparently, one woman checked her bag and then asked where the start line was... the race started at 8:30.  Not sure why she wanted to stand in the cold and dark for two hours.  It was fairly steady from 7-7:30 and then all hell broke loose.  Eventually we were all just standing in a huge pile of unsorted bags.  It took us an hour to get them all placed in ordered rows.
• I got to see some friends before they ran their race.  I didn't get to talk for too long, but it was nice to be able to say good luck.
• The winner set a new course record of 1:04:39.  FOR A HALF!!!  They could have run the course twice and still come in faster than my PR.
• I got a few little things as a thank-you for my time: free burger and fries (at White Spot if you're local), sample pack of coffee - that'll go to Colin, and a scarf with the race logo/sponsor.  At least they were small as I had to stuff them in my bag and run them home.  The scarf wedged in with my water bladder actually made it sit perfectly on my back so there was no movement!
• My run was great!  It turned out to be 24km instead of 23 (+1 since I didn't want to walk the last km to my parents' house).  I was slightly intimidated by the uphill-the-whole-way aspect, but it wasn't as bad as it looked.  Thankfully I was really familiar with the route so I could just run on auto-pilot and not think about too much.  I only had to be present enough to shoulder check at every street crossing.  Amazingly I didn't come across any idiot drivers.
• I love to listen to the radio when I run.  The ads are a little annoying, but I don't have to put any effort into selecting my music.  Our local rock station, CFOX, has a 90s brunch on Sundays from 8am - 12pm so I was pretty much set.  I'm a sucker for the music I listened to in high school... 
• I completed my run in 2:52:33, which was an average of 7:11/km.  That's including a 1 minute walk break every 20 minutes as well as many waits at traffic lights.
• One GU (since I didn't have time to buy more) plus dates is not enough for a 3 hour run.  I knew this going out, but a second GU would have been super!  On that note, Mandarin Orange is okay.  Not great, in my opinion, but it got the job done.  And it's infinitely better than Jet Blackberry.  I think I'll stick with chocolate and coffee flavours.
• I got drenched about half way through my run.  Typical Vancouver.  The people with umbrellas or safe in their cars were looking at me like I was crazy.
• I will never skip out on a week of core/strength/stretch again.  By 22km my hips were killing me (shades of the marathon).  I was so lazy last week, but couldn't bring myself to do my workouts.  Obviously that was stupid.  I will make a better effort from now on.
• I usually hate V8, but my mum had some in the fridge and I was dying at the end of my run so I had one.  Tasted like cold tomato soup, but had something like almost 500mg of sodium and potassium so my body was happy after I drank it.
• Work sucked on Sunday after my run, but I figured on that before I even got there.  I'm just happy that I wasn't scheduled til 1am like everyone else.