Two Marathons in Three Weeks!

I had this romantic idea that doing another marathon in less than 3 weeks was a brilliant idea.

After Boston, I just had to try the new course this year in my backyard at Vancouver BMO marathon. It featured the best of what the city had to offer. This was only 20 days afterwards and I "felt" like I had fully recovered. But let's be honest, the social aspects of watching some friends achieve new distances and then going to eat out at Chill Winston was what really attracted me. Read team update. 

Of course I wasn't recovered. Who was I kidding? Certainly not the running gods. My legs were absolutely struggling already at 15km. Normally they would fatigue around the 30km and I would had to survive the last 10km. I always had got to at least the halfway point in control and relative ease. I guess the rule that it takes a day for every mile you race in the marathon to fully recover really holds true.

It's just too bad I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I was regretting not signing up for the half distance despite the earlier start time. 

There was another interesting road block on the marathon course. A literal one, and by one I mean two. There were two corrals on course at Granville and Oak along 49th ave that would permit automobiles traffic to gain access momentarily as the runners crowds fizzled out. Unfortunately any straggling runners would be asked to stop running and get their time credited on the chip time.

To allow for these traffic gaps, the race field had 5 corrals each starting 5 minutes apart to allow for the gaps to occur.

Unfortunately I was caught starting in the second starting corral. I must had been one of the top 4 in my corral to catch up to the tail end of the first heat. It was a very bizarre feeling because I felt I was leading the race, despite the hundreds in the first heat starting 5 minutes earlier. Because of this, I was told by the kind volunteers to STOP. I was trying to run past them, but a human wall formed. I wasn't disgruntled and understand the first year little kinks and race logistics, I was just confused since I had never been told to stop in a race for non-emergency reasons.

But despite this awkward pause, the route was great. This route is definitely an improvement from last year's route.

 PROOF that I am a runner.

It was a very long 27 km struggle to the finish. I realized my time wasn't going to be a PB. It did prove to be great preparation training for the ironman run though.
  

I figured a "mr. winston" salad was fitting given we were at Chill Winston.