Half-marathon training – Week 17 – Vancouver training weekend

This was the last real training week before my half-marathon. My total week 17 mileage was 20 miles (5+5+10) along with some swimming. I’ve stopped weight training at this point because I don’t want to tire my muscles out any more than absolutely necessary.

I was in Vancouver this past weekend with my friend Leah (who is running the marathon next weekend) watching our fellow Thunderstaters Jeff, Kyle and Fozz play with the UDub men’s ultimate team at Regionals. Leah and I spent most of Saturday watching the boys play frisbee (in the rain – we’re such hard core fans) so we didn’t get around to running until Saturday evening. Originally we were planning on doing 9 miles but I think in the end we did about 10. We managed to chit chat through the run which means we were going at a good training pace. We didn’t eat dinner until after 9pm at which point went to the Banana Leaf and polished off deep-fried spring rolls, steemed rice (our waiter though we’d only need one order but we assured him we could eat two), a chicken dish and a green bean dish. We still weren’t full after that so we went to Tim Horton’s for Nanaimo bars and hot chocolate!

On Sunday we drove parts of the half-marathon and marathon courses. We were mostly interested in seeing the hills. The Prospect Point Hill doesn’t look too bad. It’s steep in parts but it does flatten out at the top and then there’s a lovely downhill stretch after that. The rest of the course is definitely hillier than my usual flat training around Green Lake. It was exciting to see the marathon banners hanging along the Burrard Bridge and signs up around the city warning of road closures for the race.

This upcoming week is my taper week. This basically means rest before the big race. I’m going to run 4, 3 and 2 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’m not going to go crazy on the carbo loading but I will be having pasta for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We leave for Vancouver on Friday. Leah and I are very lucky because Allison and Jeff are going to be cheering us on during the race. We’re going to plot our ETAs at various points along the course so hopefully we’ll actually meet up with them enroute.

6 days to go. I am now checking the Vancouver long range forecast several times a day. Let’s all hope for cool cloudy conditions with no rain!