Vancouver is usually all fine and right and we pride ourselves on being city slickers folk, especially I who aspires for bigger and better. But it took just about half a day of getting away from the same-old, even to a slower pace, to kick ourselves for not striving for out-of-city excursions more often. Last weekend, we spent a few days on Vancouver Island with Victoria as the target. But we took a ferry to Nanaimo instead of planning a Vancouver-Victoria return trip and spent the first afternoon driving down …

In all its glory, this is what happened before, during, and after my very first marathon ever….
Pre-race
Despite using my watch without problems on Saturday morning, I realized in the evening that it had frozen at the screen displaying my godawfully high BMI. I had picked up 3 pacebands earlier in the day for the finishing times of 4:30 (4 hours 30 minutes), 4:45, and 5:00, and wondered how useful they would be when I didn’t have a watch to track my own time!
Before we went to sleep Saturday …