Canucks → Kiwis: Racing Through Vineyards

This weekend we drove up to Blenheim for Scott to run the Saint Clair Vineyard Half Marathon! We met Ryan and Charlotte there too, who are nearly done their bike tour of the south island. Turns out biking is good training for running a race, because both Ryan and Charlotte raced too and were very happy with their times! Scott's time was also great, even despite being sick all week and having to take cold medication on race day (resulting in extra dehydration, oops!)

Another good race preparation activity is watching The Avengers! Yay for being in a town with a real theater :) We saw the movie the night before the race, and it was excellent! Definitely go see if if you haven't yet.

Race details for those interested from Scott: As Jacqui said, I was sick, sadly all the week before so I had lots of time to mope and worry about it. Woke up early on race day and sucked back some meds which made the runny nose go away, woot! Fast forward a few hours and we're heading from the outhouses to the race start with about 8-9 minutes remaining when suddenly the race starts early! Gah... Oh well, they were going on chip time anyways, but still kind of annoying. Climbed over a fence and we were on our way with the pack. Water stations seemed early and tight at first, coming around 5 and 7 km on the course, neither of which I was very thirsty for, so I just kept going and hit a massive thirst wall around 8-9km as my knee started hurting too (wtf?!)... I dragged myself along to 12k where I found the next water station and was sadly given some PeakFuel instead of water... Oh well, on we go. Knee pain dissipated a bit around here but my pace was falling off and I wasn't even hitting the pace I did in a 16km training run a few weeks before... Hit 14km and was still on a 1:42 pace for the whole half marathon, but sadly it wasn't meant to be... Everything kept adding up and the fact that Ryan was behind me somewhere was a huge motivator to just keep at it as best I could... Sprinted to the finish in a personal best of 1:45:22! Pretty happy overall with my performance given how I felt all week before, but still sadly disappointed in feeling that way! Oh well, the 2nd of many races to come! Thanks Ryan for the motivation, Charlotte for finding the race and getting us to sign up, and Jacqui for all the race support that morning! :D

This is probably my favouritest GPS'd run yet, too. Very cool to see the path, especially on Google Satellite view: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/177594783

Can't wait to get home and run more with friends. Dexter's a great training partner but he doesn't talk much...